Jicticu, JTact, anb JTmic}} Scries 

Edited by Arthur Stedman 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 



Jiction, Jact, aixtn Jancg Qtvm. 



MERRY TALES. 

By Mark Twain. 



THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND HIS EASTERN 
NEIGHBORS. 

By Poultney Bigelow. 



PADDLES AND POLITICS DOWN THE 
DANUBE. 

By Poultney Bigelow. 



SELECTED POEMS. 

By Walt Whitman. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA: THE STORY OF A LIFE. 

By Walt Whitman. 



DON FINIMONDONE: CALABRIAN 
SKETCHES. 

By Elisabeth Cavazza. 



THE MASTER OF SILENCE: A ROMANCE. 
By Irving Bacheller. 



WRITINGS OF COLUMBUS. 

Edited by Paul Leicester Ford. 

Other Volumes to be Annoimced. 

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Bound in Illuminated Cloth, each, 75 Cents. 

^*^ For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent postpaid, on re- 
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OHAS, L, WEBSTEE & 00., NEW YOEK. 





WALT WHITMAN'S HOUSE, CAMDEN, N. J. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 



OR 



THE STORY OF A LIFE 



WALT WHITMAN 



SELECTED FROM HIS PROSE WRITINGS 






^m Work 

CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO 

1892 




T5 3.3 3 / 

.As- 



Copyright, 1875, 1882. 1888, 

and 1891, 

WALT WHITMAN. 

Copyright, 1892, 
CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO. 

i^All rights reserved,) 



/Z-V^dji' 



PRESS OF 

Jenkins & McCowan, 

NEW YORK. 



EDITOR'S NOTE 



Walt Whitman's death finally came as a surprise 
to his friends. Only two months before it took place 
Mr. John Burroughs had written to a correspondent, 
*' I have repeatedly said that he would outlive us all ;" 
and this was the belief of those who had observed the 
good, gray poet's recovery from so many serious attacks 
of illness. 

When I visited Camden, with the purpose of gaining 
his consent to eclectic editions of his poems and prose, 
the task seemed hopeless. The publication of a volume 
of selections from Leaves of Grass had often been urged 
upon Mr. Whitman, but he never could bring himself 
to permit it. I should be ungrateful, indeed, were I 
not to acknowledge here the hearty cooperation afford- 
ed me by Mr. Horace L. Traubel, of Camden, in achiev- 
ing this object. It is well known that he has been for 
some years the poet's chief friend and assistant in the 
latter's literary affairs, besides organizing and conduct- 
ing arrangements for the invalid's personal comfort. 
I found that Mr. Traubel himself had in mind a vol- 
ume of prose selections similar to the one now pub- 



vi editor's note 

lished, but he cordially entered into my plans, and 
presented me with his intended title, Autobiographia. 

As in the case of Selected PoemSy the plan of this 
book was approved by Mr. Whitman, but, as in that 
case also, death prevented his examining the completed 
work. The sole responsibility for these selections, 
therefore, rests with the editor, whose purpose has been 
to give a consecutive account of the poet's life in his 
own characteristic language. 

Specimen Days, of course, forms the basis of the 
book, and I have added in their proper order passages 
from the author's later volumes, N'ove7nber Boughs and 
Good Bye my Fa7icy. By this means a very fair view of 
his life is afforded. It has not seemed necessary to in- 
dicate the frequent omissions from Specimeji Days. 
These passages have been cut out as not directly bear- 
ing on the story of his career, or as duplicating similar 
experiences beyond the limits of this volume. 

Me77ioranda Durmg the War, including all of the 
author's hospital diary here given, was published as a 
separate volume in 1875, ^-^^^ afterward as a portion of 
Specime7i Days (1883). The nature-notes and much of 
the travel-notes first appeared in The Critic and the 
New York Tribu7ie, which journals, with the old Galaxy 
(published by William C. and Frank P. Church) ac- 
cepted almost every poem and article offered them by 
Walt Whitman. 



EDITOR'S NOTE Vll 

The poet's prose style, for the most part, is conver- 
sational and loosely written or elaborately involved. 
In the opening paragraph of Specimen Days the author 
hints at his lack of strength to revise what follows, 
and criticism may therefore be deprecated. That 
he could write effective prose, when willing to take 
pains, and when not writing by theory, can be seen by 
the following extract from the preface to Two Rivulets 
(1876) : " As I write these lines, it is again early sum- 
mer — again my birthday — now my fifty-sixth. Amid 
the outside beauty and freshness, the sunlight and 
verdure of the delightful season, O how different the 
moral atmosphere amid which I now revise this Volume, 
from the jocund influences surrounding the growth and 
advent of Leaves of Grass. I occupy myself, arranging 
these pages for publication, still envelopt in thoughts of 
the death two years since of my dear Mother, the most 
perfect and magnetic character, the rarest combination 
of practical, moral and spiritual, and the least selfish, 
of all and any I have ever known — and by me O so 
much the more deeply loved — and also under the phys- 
ical aflfiiction of a tedious attack of paralysis, obstinately 
lingering and keeping its hold upon me, and quite sus- 
pending all bodily activity and comfort." 

Thanks are due Mr. Harrison S. Morris for friendly 
advice and assistance in the preparation of these Auto- 
biographia. 



111. 111. 



Good-bye, Walt ! 
Good-bye, from all you loved of earth — 
Rock, tree, dumb creature, man and woman — 
To you, their comrade human. 
The last assault 
Ends now ; and now in some great world has birth 
A minstrel, whose strong soul finds broader wings, 

More brave imaginings. 
Stars crown the hilltop where your dust shall lie, 
Even as we say good-bye. 
Good-bye, old Walt J 

E. C. S. 



Sent, with an ivy wreath, 

to his funeral, 

March 30, 1892, 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 



A HAPPY HOUR'S COMMAND 

Down in the Woods, July 2d, 1SS2, — If I do it at all I 
must delay no longer. Incongruous and full of skips 
and jumps as is that huddle of diary-jottings, war- 
memoranda of i862-'65, Nature-notes of i877-'8i, with 
Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all 
bundled up and tied by a big string, the resolution and 
indeed mandate comes to me this day, this hour, — (and 
what a day ! what an hour just passing ! the luxury of 
riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of 
sun and sky and perfect temperature, never before so 
filling me body and soul) — to go home, untie the bun- 
dle, reel out diary-scraps and memoranda, just as they 
are, large or small, one after another, into print-pages,* 

*The pages from 11 to 31 are nearly verbatim an ofF-hand letter of mine 
in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give some gloomy ex- 
periences. The war of attempted seccession has, of course, been the distin- 
guishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of 1862, and contin- 
ued steadily through '63, '64, and '65, to visit the sick and wounded of the 
army, both on the field and in the hospitals in and around Washington city. 
From the first I kept little note-books for impromptu jottings in pencil to re- 
fresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially want- 
ed, &c. In these I brief'd cases, persons, sights, occurrencesin camp, by the 
bedside, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratched 

II 



12 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

and let the melange's lackings and wants of connection 
take care of themselves. It will illustrate one phase of 
humanity anyhow; how few of life's days and hours 
(and they not by relative value or proportion, but by 
chance) are ever noted. Probably another point too, 
how we give long preparations for some object, plan- 
ning and delving and fashioning, and then, when the 
actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite 
unprepared, and tumble the thing together, letting 
hurry and crudeness tell the story better than fine work. 
At any rate I obey my happy hour's command, which 
seems curiously imperative. May-be, if I don't do any- 
thing else, I shall send out the most wayward, spon- 
taneous, fragmentary book ever printed. 

down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or 
tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books 
left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associa- 
tions never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader 
the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd livraisons, each com- 
posed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and 
fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, 
blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, 
sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, 
or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the 
pages from 53 to 103 are verbatim copies of thos'e lurid and blood-smutch'd 
little note-books. 

Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Some time aftei 
the war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me for several 
years. In 1876 I began to get over the worst of it. From this date, portions 
of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at a secluded haunt down in 
Camden county. New Jersey — Timber creek, quite a little river (it enters 
from the great Delaware, twelve miles away) — with primitive solitudes, 
winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs, and all 
the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, 
walnut trees, &c., can bring. Through these times, and on these spots, the 
diary from page 104 onward was mostly written. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I3 

ANSWER TO AN INSISTING FRIEND 

You ask for items, details of my early life — of geneal- 
ogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my 
ancestry, and of its far back Netherlands stock on the 
maternal side — of the region where I was born and 
raised, and my father and mother before me, and theirs 
before them — with a word about Brooklyn and New 
York cities, the times I lived there as lad and young 
man. You say you want to get at these details mainly 
as the go-befores and embryons of ** Leaves of Grass." 
Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of 
them all. I have often thought of the meaning of such 
things — that one can only encompass and complete 
matters of that kind by exploring behind, perhaps very 
far behind, themselves directly, and so into their gene- 
sis, antecedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck 
would have it, I lately whiled away the tedium of a 
week's half-sickness and confinement, by collating 
these very items for another (yet unfulfill'd, probably 
abandon'd,) purpose; and if you will be satisfied with 
them, authentic in date-occurrence and fact simply, 
and told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I 
shall npt hesitate to make extracts, for I catch at any- 
thing to save labor; but those will be the best versions 
of what I want to convey. 

GENEALOGY— VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN 

The later years of the last century found the Van 
Velsor family, my mother's side, living on their own 
farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New York State, 



14 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

near the eastern edge of Queens county, about a mile 
from the harbor.* My father's side — probably the fifth 
generation from the first English arrivals in New Eng- 
land — were at the same time farmers on their own land 
— (and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, all good soil, 
gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth woods, 
plenty of grand old trees,) two or three miles off, at 
West Hills, Suffolk county. The Whitman name in 
the Eastern States, and so branching West and South, 
starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, 
in Old England, where he grew up, married, and his 
eldest son was born in 1629. He came over in the 
'*True Love" in 1640 to America, and lived in Wey- 
mouth, Mass., which place became the mother-hive of 
the New-Englanders of the name : he died in 1692. 
His brother, Rev. Zechariah Whitman, also came over 
in the ** True Love," either at that time or soon after, 
and lived at Milford, Conn. A son of this Zechariah, 
named Joseph, migrated to Huntington, Long Island, 
and permanently settled there. Savage's "Genealog- 
ical Dictionary" (vol. iv, p. 524) gets the Whitman 
family establish'd at Huntington, per this Joseph, be- 
fore 1664. It is quit^ certain that from that beginning, 
and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans, and all 
others in Suffolk county, have since radiated, myself 
among the number. John and Zechariah both went 
to England and back again divers times ; they had 
large families, and several of their children were born 

* Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch, from 
Holland, then on the east end by the English — the dividing line of the two 
nationalities being a little west of Huntington, where my father's folkslived, 
and where I was born. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 5 

in the old country. We hear of the father of John and 
Zechariah, Abijah Whitman, who goes over into the 
1500's, but we know little about him, except that he 
also was for some time in America. 

These old pedigree-reminiscences come up to me 
vividly from a visit I made not long since (in my 63d 
year) to West Hills, and to the burial grounds of my 
ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of that visit, 
written there and then : 

THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEME- 
TERIES 

July 2gy 1 88 I. — After more than forty years' absence, 
(except a brief visit, to take my father there once more, 
two years before he died,) went down Long Island on 
a week's jaunt to the place where I was born, thirty 
miles from New York city. Rode around the old fa- 
miliar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long 
upon them, everything coming back to me. Went to 
the old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a 
view eastward, inclining south, over the broad and 
beautiful farm lands of my grandfather (1780,) and my 
father. There was the new house (18 10,) the big oak 
a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old ; there 
the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way 
off even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of my 
great-grandfather (i75o-'6o) still standing, with its 
mighty timbers and low ceilings. Near by, a stately 
grove of tall, vigorous black-walnuts, beautiful. Apollo- 
like, the sons or grandsons, no doubt, of black-walnuts 
during or before 1776. On the other side of the road 
spread the famous apple orchard, over twenty acres. 



l6 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

the trees planted by hands long mouldering in the 
grave (my uncle Jesse's,) but quite many of them evi- 
dently capable of throwing out their annual blossoms 
and fruit yet. 

I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubt- 
less of a century since at least) on the burial hill of the 
Whitmans of many generations. Fifty and more graves 
are quite plainly traceable, and as many more decay'd 
out of all form — depress'd mounds, crumbled and 
broken stones, cover'd with moss — the gray and sterile 
hill, the clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just 
varied by the soughing wind. There is always the 
deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these 
ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many; 
so what must this one have been to me ? My whole 
family history, with its succession of links, from the 
first settlement down to date, told here — three cen- 
turies concentrate on this sterile acre. 

The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal lo- 
cality, and if possible was still more penetrated and 
impress'd. I write this paragraph on the burial hill of 
the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring, the most signifi- 
cant depository of the dead that could be imagined, 
without the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, 
soil sterile, a mostly bare plateau-flat of half an acre, 
the top of a hill, brush and well grown trees and dense 
woods bordering all around, very primitive, secluded, 
no visitors, no road (you cannot drive here, you have 
to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot.) Two 
or three-score graves quite plain ; as many more almost 
rubb'd out. My grandfather Cornelius and my grand- 
mother Amy (Naomi) and numerous relatives nearer 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1/ 

or remoter, on my mother's side, lie buried here. The 
scene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild odor of 
the woods, a slightly drizzling rain, the emotional at- 
mosphere of the place, and the inferr'd reminiscences, 
were fitting accompaniments. 

THE MATERNAL HOMESTEAD 

I went down from this ancient grave place eighty or 
ninety rods to the site of the Van Velsor homestead, 
where my mother was born (1795,) and where every spot 
had been familiar to me as a child and youth (i825-'4o.) 
Then stood there a long rambling, dark-gray, shingle- 
sided house, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much 
open road-space. Now of all those not a vestige left; all 
had been pull'd down, erased, and the plow and har- 
row pass'd over foundations, road-spaces and every- 
thing, for many summers; fenced in at present, and 
grain and clover growing like any other fine fields. 
Only a big hole from the cellar, with some little heaps 
of broken stone, green with grass and weeds, identified 
the place. Even the copious old brook and spring 
seem'd to have mostly dwindled away. The whole 
scene, with what it arous'd, memories of my young 
days there half a century ago, the vast kitchen and 
ample fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining, the 
plain furniture, the meals, the house full of merry peo- 
ple, my grandmother Amy's sweet old face in its 
Quaker cap, my grandfather "the Major," jovial, red, 
stout, with sonorous voice and characteristic physiog- 
nomy, with the actual sights themselves, made the 
most pronounc'd half-day's experience of my whole 
jaynt. 



15 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy sur- 
roundings, my dearest mother, Louisa Van Velsor, 
grew up — (her mother, Amy Williams, of the Friends' 
or Quakers' denomination — the Williams family, seven 
sisters and one brother — the father and brother sailors, 
both of whom met their deaths at sea.) The Van Vel- 
sor people were noted for fine horses, which the men 
bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother, as 
a young woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to 
the head of the family himself, the old race of the 
Netherlands, so deeply grafted on Manhattan island 
and in Kings and Queens counties, never yielded a 
more mark'd and full Americanized specimen than 
Major Cornelius Van Velsor. 

TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS 

Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of 
Long Island, at and just before that time, here are 
two samples: 

** The Whitmans, at the beginning of the present cen- 
tury, lived in a long story-and-a-half farm-house, hugely 
timber'd, which is still standing. A great smoke-canopied 
kitchen, with vast hearth and chimney, form'd one end of 
the house. The existence of slavery in New York at that 
time, and the possession by the family of some twelve or 
fifteen slaves, house and field servants, gave things quite 
a patriarchal look. The very young darkies could be 
seen, a swarm of them, toward sundown, in this kitchen, 
squatted in a circle on the floor, eating their supper of In- 
dian pudding and milk. In the house, and in food and fur- 
niture, all was rude, but substantial. No carpets or stoves 
were known, and no coffee, and tea or sugar only for the 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I9 

women. Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light 
on winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary 
vegetables and grains were plentiful. Cider was the men's 
common drink, and used at meals. The clothes were 
mainly homespun. Journeys were made by both men and 
women on horseback. Both sexes labor'd with their own 
hands — the men on the farm — the women in the house and 
around it. Books were scarce. The annual copy of the 
almanac was a treat, and was pored over through the long 
winter evenings. I must not forget to mention that both 
these families were near enough to the sea to behold it 
from the high places, and to hear in still hours the roar of 
the surf; the latter, after a storm, giving a peculiar sound 
at night. Then all hands, male and female, went down 
frequently on beach and bathing parties, and the men on 
practical expeditions for cutting salt hay, and for clamming 
and fishing." — John Bin-roughs'' s Notes. 

** The ancestors of Walt Whitman, on both the paternal 
and maternal sides, kept a good table, sustain'd the hospi- 
talities, decorums, and an excellent social reputation in the 
country, and they were often of mark'd individuality. If 
space permitted, I should consider some of the men worthy 
special description; and still more some of the women. 
His great-grandmother on the paternal side, for instance, 
was a large swarthy woman, who lived to a very old age. 
She smoked tobacco, rode on horseback like a man, man- 
aged the most vicious horse, and, becoming a widow in 
later life, went forth every day over her farm-lands, fre- 
quently in the saddle, directing the labor of her slaves, 
with language in which, on exciting occasions, oaths were 
not spared. The two immediate grandmothers were, in 
the best sense, superior women. The maternal one (Amy 
Williams before marriage) was a Friend, or Quakeress, of 
sweet, sensible character, housewifely proclivities, and 



20 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other, CHannah Brush,) 
was an equally noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to 
be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a natural lady, 
was early in life a school-mistress, and had great solidity 
of mind. W. W. himself makes much of the women of his 
ancestry." — The sa?/ie. 

Out from these arrieres of persons and scenes, I was 
born May 31, 1819. And nov^ to dwell awhile on the 
locality itself — as the successive growth-stages of my 
infancy, childhood, youth and manhood were all 
pass'd on Long Island, which I sometimes feel as if I 
had incorporated. I roam'd, as boy and man, and 
have lived in nearly all parts, from Brooklyn to Mon- 
tauk point. 

PAUMANOK, AND MY LIFE ON IT AS CHILD 
AND YOUNG MAN 

Worth fully and particularly investigating indeed 
this Paumanok, (to give the spot its aboriginal name,*) 
stretching east through Kings, Queens and Suffolk 
counties, 120 miles altogether — on the north Long 
Island sound, a beautiful, varied and picturesque series 

* " Paumanok, (or Paumanake, or Paumanack, the Indian name of Long 
Island,) over a hundred miles long; shaped like a fish — plenty of sea shore, 
sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air too strong for inva- 
lids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds, the south-side meadows 
cover'd with salt hay, the soil of the island generally tough,but good for the 
locust-tree, the apple orchard, and the blackberry, and with numberless 
springs of the sweetest water in the world. Years ago, among the bay-men — 
a strong, wild race, now extinct, or rather entirely changed — a native of Long 
Island was called a PaU7izanacker, or Creole- Fatimanacker.''' — jfohn Bur- 
roughs. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 21 

of inlets, '* necks " and sea-like expansions, for a hun- 
dred miles to Orient point. On the ocean side the 
great south bay dotted with countless hummocks, 
mostly small, some quite large, occasionally long bars 
of sand out two hundred rods to a mile-and-a-half 
from the shore. While now and then, as at Rockaway 
and far east along the Hamptons, the beach makes 
right on the island, the sea dashing up without inter- 
vention. Several light-houses on the shores east; a 
long history of wrecks tragedies, some even of late 
years. As a youngster, I was in the atmosphere and 
traditions of many of these wrecks — of one or two 
almost an observer. Off Hempstead beach, for exam- 
ple, was the loss of the ship ** Mexico " in 1840, (allud- 
ed to in "the Sleepers" in L. of G.) And at Hamp- 
ton, some years later, the destruction of the brig 
" Elizabeth," a fearful affair, in one of the worst win- 
ter gales, where Margaret Fuller went down, with her 
husband and child. 

Inside the outer bars or beach this south bay is 
everywhere comparatively shallow; of cold winters all 
thick ice on the surface. As a boy I often went forth 
with a chum or two, on those frozen fields, w4th hand- 
sled, axe and eel-spear, after messes of eels. We would 
cut holes in the ice, sometimes striking quite an eel- 
bonanza, and filling our baskets with great, fat, sweet, 
white-meated fellows. The scenes, the ice, drawing 
the hand-sled, cutting holes, spearing the eels, &c., 
were of course just such fun as is dearest to boyhood. 
The shores of this bay, winter and summer, and my 
doings there in early life, are woven all through L. of 
G. One sport I was very fond of was to go on a bay- 



22 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

party in summer to gather sea-gull's eggs. (The gulls 
lay two or three eggs, more than half the size of hen's 
eggs, right on the sand, and leave the sun's heat to 
hatch them.) 

The eastern end of Long Island, the Peconic bay 
region, I knew quite well too — sail'd more than once 
around Shelter island, and down to Montauk — spent 
many an hour on Turtle hill by the old light-house, on 
the extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of 
the Atlantic. I used to like to go down there and fra- 
ternize with the blue-fishers, or the annual squads of 
sea-bass takers. Sometimes, along Montauk peninsula, 
(it is some 15 miles long, and good grazing,) met the 
strange, unkempt, half-barbarous herdsmen, at that 
time living there entirely aloof from society or civiliza- 
tion, in charge, on those rich pasturages, of vast droves 
of horses, kine or sheep, own'd by famers of the east- 
ern towns. Sometimes, too, the few remaining Indi- 
ans, or half-breeds, at that period left on Montauk 
peninsula, but now I believe altogether extinct. 

More in the middle of the island were the spreading 
Hempstead plains, then (i83o-'4o) quite prairie-like, 
open, uninhabited, rather sterile, cover'd with kill-calf 
and huckleberry bushes, yet plenty of fair pasture for 
the cattle, mostly milch-cows, who fed there by hun- 
dreds, even thousands, and at evening, (the plains too 
were own'd by the towns, and this was the use of them 
in common,) might be seen taking their way home, 
branching off regularly in the right places. I have of- 
ten been out on the edges of these plains toward sun- 
down, and can yet recall in fancy the interminable 
cow-processions, and hear the music of the tin or cop- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 23 

per bells clanking far or near, and breathe the cool of 
the sweet and slightly aromatic evening air, and note 
the sunset. 

Through the same region of the island, but further 
east, extended wide central tracts of pine and scrub- 
oak (charcoal was largely made here,) monotonous and 
sterile. But many a good day or half-day did I have, 
wandering through those solitary cross-roads, inhaling 
the peculiar and wild aroma. Here, and all along the 
island and its shores, I spent intervals many years, all 
seasons, sometimes riding, sometimes boating, but 
generally afoot, (I was always then a good walker,) ab- 
sorbing fields, shores, marine incidents, characters, the 
bay-men, farmers, pilots — always had a plentiful ac- 
quaintance with the latter, and with fishermen — went 
every summer on sailing trips — always liked the bare 
sea-beach, south side, and have some of my happiest 
hours on it to this day. 

As I write, the whole experience comes back to me 
after the lapse of forty and more years — the soothing 
rustle of the waves, and the saline smell — boyhood's 
times, the clam-digging, barefoot, and with trousers 
roll'd up — hauling down the creek — the perfume of 
the sedge-meadows — the hay-boat, and the chowder 
and fishing excursions; — or, of later years, little voy- 
ages down and out New York bay, in the pilot boats. 
Those same later years, also, while living in Brooklyn, 
(i836-'5o) I went regularly every week in the mild sea- 
sons down to Coney island, at that time a long, bare, 
unfrequented shore, which I had all to myself, and 
where I loved, after bathing, to race up and down the 
hard sand, and declaim Homer or Shakspere to the 



24 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

surf and sea-gulls by the hour. But I am getting 
ahead too rapidly, and must keep more in my traces. 

MY FIRST READING— LAFAYETTE 

From 1824 to '28 our family lived in Brooklyn in 
Front, Cranberry and Johnson streets. In the latter 
my father built a nice house for a home, and afterwards 
another in Tillary street. We occupied them, one af- 
ter the other, but they were mortgaged, and we lost 
them. I yet remember Lafayette's visit. Most of 
these years I went to the public schools. It must have 
been about 1829 or '30 that I went with my father and 
mother to hear Elias Hicks preach in a ball-room on 
Brooklyn heights. At about the same time employed 
as a boy in an office, lawyers', father and two sons, 
Clarke's, Fulton street, near Orange. I had a nice 
desk and window-nook to myself; Edward C. kindly 
help'd me at my handwriting and composition, and, 
(the signal event of my life up to that time,) subscribed 
for me to a big circulating library. For a time I now 
revel'd in romance-reading of all kinds; first, the 
'* Arabian Nights," all the volumes, an amazing treat. 
Then, with sorties in very many other directions, took 
in Walter Scott's novels, one after another, and his 
poetry, (and continue to enjoy novels and poetry to 
this day.) 

OLD BROOKLYN DAYS (ANOTHER ACCOUNT) 

It must have been in 1822 or '3 that I first came to 
live in Brooklyn. Lived first in Front street, not far 
from what was then call'd ''the New Ferry," wending 



AUTOBIOGRAPIIIA 25 

the river from the foot of Catharine (or Main) street to 
New York city. 

I was a little child (was born in 1819,) but tramp'd 
freely about the neighborhood and town, even then; 
was often on the aforesaid New Ferry; remember how 
I was petted and deadheaded by the gatekeepers and 
deckhands (all such fellows are kind to little children,) 
and remember the horses that seem'd to me so queer 
as they trudg'd around in the central houses of the 
boats, making the water-power. (For it was just on 
the eve of the steam-engine, which was soon after in- 
troduced on the ferries.) Edward Copeland (afterward 
Mayor) had a grocery store then at the corner of Front 
and Catharine streets. 

Presently we Whitmans all moved up to Tillary 
street, near Adams, where my father, who was a car- 
penter, built a house for himself and us all. It was 
from here I "assisted " the personal coming of Lafay- 
ette in 1-824-5 in Brooklyn. He came over the Old 
Ferry, as the now Fulton Ferry (partly navigated quite 
up to that day by *' horse boats," though the first 
steamer had begun to be used hereabouts) was then 
call'd, and was receiv'd at the foot of Fulton street. 
It was on that occasion that the corner-stone of the 
Apprentices' Libraiy, at the corner of Cranberry and 
Henry streets — since pull'd down — was laid by Lafay- 
ette's own hands. Numerous children arrived on the 
grounds, of whom I was one, and were assisted by 
several gentlemen to safe spots to view the ceremony. 
Among others, Lafayette, also helping children, took 
me up — I was five years old — press'd me a moment to 
his breast, gave me a kiss and set me down in a safe 



26 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

spot. Lafayette was at that time between sixty-five 
and seventy years of age, with a manly figure, and a 
kind face. 

PRINTING OFFICE 

After about two years went to work in a weekly news- 
paper and printing office, to learn the trade. The 
paper was the '* Long Island Patriot," owned by S. E. 
Clements, who was also postmaster. An old printer in 
the office, William Hartshorne, a revolutionary charac- 
ter, who had seen Washington, was a special friend of 
mine, and I had many a talk with him about long past 
times. The apprentices, including myself, boarded 
with his grand-daughter. I used occasionally to go 
out riding with the boss, who was very kind to us boys; 
Sundays he took us all to a great old rough, fortress- 
looking stone church, on Joralemon street, near where 
the Brooklyn city hall now is — (at that time broad 
fields and country roads everywhere around.) After- 
ward I work'd on the '* Long Island Star," Alden 
Spooner's paper. My father all these years pursuing 
his trade as carpenter and builder, with varying fortune. 
There was a growing family of children — eight of us — 
my brother Jesse the oldest, myself the second, my 
dear sisters Mary and Hannah Louisa, my brothers An- 
drew, George, Thomas Jefferson, and then my young- 
est brother, Edward, born 1835, and always badly crip- 
pled, as I am myself of late years. 

GROWTH— HEALTH— WORK 

I develop'd (1833-4-5) into a healthy, strong youth 
(grew too fast, though, was nearly as big as a man at 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 2/ 

15 or 16.) Our family at this period moved back to 
the country, my dear mother very ill for a long time, 
but recover'd. All these years I was down Long Island 
more or less every summer, now east, now west, some- 
times months at a stretch. At 16, 17, and so on, was 
fond of debating societies, and had an active member- 
ship with them, off and on, in Brooklyn and one or 
two country towns on the island. A most omnivorous 
novel-reader, these and later years, devour'd everything 
I could get. Fond of the theatre, also, in New York, 
went whenever I could — sometimes witnessing fine per- 
formances. 

1836-7, work'd as compositor in printing offices in 
New York city. Then, when little more than eighteen, 
and for a while afterward, went to teaching country 
schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties. Long 
Island, and "boarded round." (This latter I consider 
one of my best experiences and deepest lessons in hu- 
man nature behind the scenes, and in the masses.) In 
'39, '40, I started and publish'd a weekly paper in my 
native town, Huntington. Then returning to New 
York city and Brooklyn, w^ork'd on as printer and 
writer, mostly prose, but an occasional shy at ** poetry." 

MY PASSION FOR FERRIES 

Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time 
forward, my life, then, and still more the following 
years, was curiously identified with Fulton ferry, already 
becoming the greatest of its sort in the world for gen- 
eral importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and pictu- 
resqueness. Almost daily, later, ('50 to '60,) I cross'd 



28 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I 
could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompani- 
ments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies, 
underneath — the great tides of humanity also, with 
ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had 
a passion for ferries; to me they afford inimitable, 
streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river and 
bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a 
fine day — the hurrying, splashing sea-tides — the chang- 
ing panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of 
big ones outward bound to distant ports — the myriads 
of white-sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the mar- 
velously beautiful yachts — the majestic sound boats as 
they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, 
afternoon, eastward bound — the prospect off toward 
Staten Island, or down the Narrows, or the other way 
up the Hudson — what refreshment of spirit such sights 
and experiences gave me years ago (and many a time 
since.) My old pilot friends, the Balsirs, Johnny Cole, 
Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, 
Tom Gere — how well I remember them all. 

BROADWAY SIGHTS 

Besides Fulton ferry, oflf and on for years, I knew 
and frequented Broadway — that noted avenue of New 
York's crowded and mixed humanity, and of so many 
notables. Here I saw, during those times, Andrew 
Jackson, Webster, Clay, Seward, Martin Van Buren, 
filibuster Walker, Kossuth, Fitz Greene Halleck, Bry- 
ant, the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, the first 
Japanese ambassadors, and lots of other celebrities of 



AUTOBIOGRAPIIIA 29 

the time. Always something novel or inspiriting; yet 
mostly to me the hurrying and vast amplitude of those 
never-ending human currents. I remember seeing 
James Fenimore Cooper in a court-room in Chambers 
street, back of the city hall, where he was carrying on 
a law case — (I think it was a charge of libel he had 
brought against some one.) I also remember seeing 
Edgar A. Poe, and having a short interview with him, 
(it must have been in 1845 or '6,) in his ofhce, second 
story of a corner building, (Duane or Pearl street.) 
He was editor and owner or part owner of "the 
Broadway Journal." The visit was about a piece of 
mine he had publish'd. Poe was very cordial, in a 
quiet way, appear'd well in person, dress. &c. I have a 
distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, 
manner and matter; very kindly and human, but sub- 
dued, perhaps a little jaded. For another of my rem- 
iniscences, here on the west side, just below Houston 
street, I once saw (it must have been about 1832, of a 
sharp, bright January day) a bent, feeble but stout- 
built very old man, bearded, swathed in rich furs, with 
a great ermine cap on his head, led and assisted, al- 
most carried, down the steps of his high front stoop (a 
dozen friends and servants, emulous, carefully holding, 
guiding him) and then lifted and tuck'd in a gorgeous 
sleigh, envelop'd in other furs, for a ride. The sleigh 
was drawn by as fine a team of horses as I ever saw. 
(You needn't think all the best animals are brought up 
nowadays ; never was such horseflesh as fifty years ago 
on Long Island, or south, or in New York city; folks 
look'd for spirit and mettle in a nag, not tame speed 
merely.) Well, I, a boy of perhaps thirteen or four- 



30 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

teen, stopp'd and gazed long at the spectacle of that 
fur-swathed old man, surrounded by friends and ser- 
vants, and the careful seating of him in the sleigh. I 
remember the spirited, champing horses, the driver 
with his whip, and a fellow-driver by his side, for extra 
prudence. The old man, the subject of so much atten- 
tion, I can almost see now. It w^as John Jacob Astor. 
The years 1846, '47, and there along, see me still in 
New York city, working as writer and printer, having 
my usual ^ood health, and a good time generally. 

OMNIBUS JAUNTS AND DRIVERS 

One phase of those days must by no means go unre- 
corded — namely, the Broadway omnibuses, with their 
drivers. The vehicles still (I write this paragraph in 
1 881) give a portion of the character of Broadway — the 
Fifth avenue, Madison avenue, and Twenty-third street 
lines yet running. But the flush days of the old 
Broadway stages, characteristic and copious, are over. 
The Yellow-birds, the Red-birds, the original Broad- 
way, the Fourth avenue, the Knickerbocker, and a 
dozen others of twenty or thirty years ago, are all gone. 
And the men specially identified with them, and giving 
vitality and meaning to them — the drivers — a strange, 
natural, quick-eyed, and wondrous race — (not only 
Rabelais and Cervantes would have gloated upon them, 
but Homer and Shakspere would) — how well I remem- 
ber them, and rriust here give a word about them. How 
many hours, forenoons and afternoons — how many ex- 
hilarating night-times I have had — perhaps June or 
July, in cooler air — riding the whole length of Broad- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 3 1 

way, listening to some yarn, (and the most vivid yarns 
ever spun, and the rarest mimicry) — or perhaps I de- 
claiming some stormy passage from Julius Caesar or 
Richard, (you could roar as loudly as you chose in that 
heavy, dense, uninterrupted street-bass.) Yes, I knew 
all the drivers then, Broadway Jack, Dressmaker, 
Balky Bill, George Storms, Old Elephant, his brother 
Young Elephant (who came afterward,) Tippy, Pop 
Rice, Big Frank, Yellow Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsy 
Dee, and dozens more; for there were hundreds. They 
had immense qualities, largely animal — eating, drink- 
ing, women — great personal pride, in their way — per- 
haps a few slouches here and there, but I should have 
trusted the general run of them, in their simple good- 
will and honor, under all circumstances. Not only for 
comradeship, and sometimes affection — great studies I 
found them also. (I suppose the critics will laugh 
heartily, but the influence of those Broadway omni- 
bus jaunts and drivers and declamations and escapades 
undoubtedly enter'd into the gestation of *' Leaves of 
Grass.") 

OLD ACTORS, SINGERS, SHOWS, ETC., IN NEW 
YORK 

Flitting 7neiition — {with much left out) 

Seems to me I ought acknowledge my debt to act- 
ors, singers, public speakers, conventions, and the Stage 
in New York, my youthful days, from 1835 onward — 
say to '60 or '61 — and to plays and operas generally. 
(Which nudges a pretty big disquisition: of course it 
should be all elaborated and penetrated more deeply — 



32 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

but I will here give only some flitting mentionings of 
my youth.; Seems to m.e now, when I look back, the 
Italian contralto Marietta Alboni fshe is living yet, in 
Paris, 1 891, in good condition, good voice yet, consid- 
ering) with the then prominent histrions Booth, Edvrin 
Forrest, and Fanny Kemble and the Italian singer Bet- 
tini, have had the deepest and most lasting effect upon 
me. I should like well if Madame Alboni and the old 
composer Verdi, Tand Bettini the tenor, if he is living) 
could know how much noble pleasure and happiness 
they gave me, and how deeply I always remember them 
and thank them to this day. For theatricals in litera- 
ture and doubtless upon me personally, including opera, 
have been of course serious factors. TThe experts and 
musicians of my present friends claim that the new 
Wagner and his pieces belong far more truly to me, and 
I to them. Very likely. But I was fed and bred under 
the Italian dispensation, and absorb'd it, and doubtless 
show it.) 

As a young fellow, when possible I always studied 
a play or libretto quite carefully over, by myself, ('some- 
times twice through,) before seeing it on the stage ; read 
it the day or two days before. Tried both ways — not 
reading some beforehand ; but I found I gain'd most 
by getting that sort of mastery first, if the piece had 
depth. rSurface effects and glitter were much less 
thought of, I am sure, those times.; There were many 
fine old plays, neither tragedies nor comedies — the 
names of them quite unknown in to-day's current au- 
diences. "All is not Gold that Glitters," in which 
Charlotte Gush man had a superbly enacted part, was 
of that kind. G. G., who revel'd in them, was great 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 33 

in such pieces; I think better than in the heavy popu- 
lar roles. 

We had some fine music those days. We had the 
English opera of " Cinderella " (with Henry Placide as 
the pompous old father) an unsurpassable bit of com- 
edy and music. We had " Bombastes Furioso." Must 
have been in 1844 (or '5) I saw Charles Kean and Mrs. 
Kean (Ellen Tree) — saw them in the Park, in Shak- 
spere's "King John." He, of course, was the chief 
character. She play'd Queen Constance. Tom Hamblin 
was Faulco7ibridge, and probably the best ever on the 
stage. It was an immense show-piece, too; lots of 
grand set scenes and fine armor-suits and all kinds of 
appointments imported from London (where it had 
been first render'd.) The large brass bands — ^the three 
or four hundred " supes " — the interviews between the 
French and English armies — the talk with Hubert (and 
the hot irons) the delicious acting of Prince Arthur 
(Mrs. Richardson, I think) — -and all the fine blare and 
court pomp — I remember to this hour. The death-scene 
of the King in the orchard of Swinstead Abbey, was 
very effective. Kean rush'd in, gray-pale and yellow, 
and threw himself on a lounge in the open. His pangs 
were horribly realistic. (He must have taken lessons 
in some hospital.) 

Fanny Kemble play'd to wonderful efifect in such 
pieces as " Fazio, or the Italian Wife." The turning- 
point was jealousy. It was a rapid-running, yet heavy- 
timber'd, tremendous wrenching, passionate play. Such 
old pieces always seem'd to me built like an ancient ship 
of the line, solid and lock'd from keel up — oak and 
metal and knots. One of the finest characters was a 



34 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

great court lady, Aldahella, enacted by Mrs. Sharpe. O 
how it all entranced us, and knock'd us about, as the 
scenes swept on like a cyclone ! 

Saw Hackett at the old Park many times, and re- 
member him well. His renderings were first-rate in 
everything. He inaugurated the true " Rip Van Win- 
kle," and look'd and acted and dialogued it to perfec- 
tion (he was of Dutch breed, and brought up among 
old Holland descendants in Kings and Queens coun- 
ties. Long Island.) The play and the acting of it have 
been adjusted to please popular audiences since; but 
there was in that original performance certainly some- 
thing of a far higher order, more art, more reality, 
more resemblance, a bit of fine pathos, a lofty brogue, 
beyond anything afterward. 

One of my big treats was the rendering at the old 
Park of Shakspere's ** Tempest" in musical version. 
There was a very fine instrumental band, not numerous, 
but with a capital leader. Mrs. Austin was the ArieU 
and Peter Richings the Caliban; both excellent. The 
drunken song of the latter has probably been never 
equal'd. The perfect actor Clarke (old Clarke) was 
Prospero. 

Yes; there were in New York and Brooklyn some 
fine non-technical singing performances, concerts, such 
as the Hutchinson band, three brothers, and the sister, 
the red-cheek'd New England carnation, sweet Abby; 
sometimes plaintive and balladic — sometimes anti- 
slavery, anti-calomel, and comic. There were concerts 
by Templeton, Russell, Dempster, the old AUeghanian 
band, and many others. Then we had lots of " negro 
minstrels," with capital character songs and voices. 1 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 35 

often saw Rice, the original " Jim Crow," at the old 
Park Theatre, filling up the gap in some short bill — and 
the wild chants and dances were admirable — probably 
ahead of anything since. Every theatre had some su- 
perior voice, and it was common to give a favorite song 
between the acts. " The Sea " at the bijou Olympic, 
(Broadway near Grand,) was always welcome from a lit- 
tle Englishman named Edwin, a good balladist. At the 
Bowery the loves of " Sweet William," 

''When on the Downs the fleet was moor'd," 

always bro't an encore, and sometimes a treble. 

I remember Jenny Lind and heard her (1850 I think) 
several times. She had the most brilliant, captivating, 
popular musical style and expression of any one known; 
(the canary, and several other sweet birds are wondrous 
fine — but there is something in song that goes deeper 
— isn't there ?) 

And who remembers the renown'd New York ** Tab- 
ernacle " of those days " before the war " ? It was on 
the east side of Broadway, near Pearl street — was a 
great turtle-shaped hall, and you had to walk back 
from the street entrance, thro' a long wide corridor to 
get to it — was very strong — had an immense gallery — 
altogether held three or four thousand people. Here 
the huge annual conventions of the windy and cyclonic 
'* reformatory societies" of those times were held — es- 
pecially the tumultuous Anti-Slavery ones. I remember 
hearing Wendell Phillips, Emerson, Cassius Clay, John 
P. Hale, Beecher, Fred Douglass, the Burleighs, Garri- 
son, and others. Sometimes the Hutchinsons would 
sing — very fine. Sometimes there were angry rows. A 



36 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

chap named Isaiah Rhynders, a fierce poHtician of 
those days, with a band of robust supporters, would at- 
tempt to contradict the speakers and break up the 
meetings. But the Anti-Slavery, and Quaker, and Tem- 
perance, and Missionary and other conventions and 
speakers were tough, tough, and always maintained 
their ground, and carried out their programs fully. I 
went frequently to these meetings, May after May— 
learn'd much from them — was sure to be on hand when 
J. P. Hale or Cash Clay made speeches. 

If it is worth while I might add that there was a small 
but well-appointed amateur-theatre up Broadway, with 
the usual stage, orchestra, pit, boxes, &c., and that I 
was myself a member for some time, and acted parts 
in it several times — ** second parts " as they were call'd. 
Perhaps it too was a lesson, or help'd that way; at any 
rate it was full of fun and enjoyment. 

THE OLD BOWERY AND BOOTH 

For the elderly New Yorker of to-day, perhaps, noth- 
ing were more likely to start up memories of his early 
manhood than the mention of the Bowery and the 
elder Booth. At the date given \circa 1838], the more 
stylish and select theatre (prices, 50 cents pit, $1 boxes) 
was ** The Park," a large and well-appointed house on 
Park Row, opposite the present post-ofiice. English 
opera and the old comedies were often given in capital 
style; the principal foreign stars appear'd here, with 
Italian opera at wide intervals. The Park held a large 
part in my boyhood's and young manhood s life. Here 
I heard the English actor, Anderson, in "Charles de 



AUTOBIOGRAPIIIA 37 

Moor," and in the fine part of Gisippus. Here I 
heard Fanny Kemble, Charlotte Cushman, the Seguins, 
Daddy Rice, Hackettas Fahtaff, Nivirod Wildfire, Rip 
Van WinJde, and in his Yankee characters. It was here 
(some years later than the date in the headline) I also 
heard Mario many times, and at his best. In such parts 
as Gc7i7iaro, in " Lucretia Borgia," he was inimitable 
— the sweetest of voices, a pure tenor, of considerable 
compass and respectable power. His wife, Grisi, was 
with him, no longer first-class or young — a fine Nor- 
mciy though, to the last. 

But getting back more specifically to the date and 
theme I started from — the heavy tragedy business pre- 
vail'd more decidedly at the Bowery Theatre, where 
Booth and Forrest w^ere frequently to be heard. Though 
Booth pere, then in his prime, ranging in age from 40 
to 44 years (he was born in 1796,) was the loyal child 
and continuer of the traditions of orthodox English 
play-acting, he stood out " himself alone " in many re- 
spects beyond any of his kind on record, and with ef- 
fects and ways that broke through all rules and all tra- 
ditions. He has been well described as an actor 
'' whose instant and tremendous concentration of pas- 
sion in his delineations overwhelm'd his audience, and 
wrought into it such enthusiasm that it partook of the 
fever of inspiration surging through his own veins." 
He seems to have been of beautiful private character, 
very honorable, affectionate, good-natured, no arro- 
gance, glad to give the other actors the best chances. 
He knew all stage points thoroughly, and curiously 
ignored the mere dignities. I once talk'd w^ith a man 
who had seen him do the Second Actor in the mock 



38 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

play to Charles Kean's Hainlet in Baltimore. He was a 
marvellous linguist. He play'd Shylock once in Lon- 
don, giving the dialogue in Hebrew, and in New Or- 
leans, Oreste (Racine's ** Andromaque ") in French. 
One trait of his habits, I have heard, was strict vege- 
tarianism. He was exceptionally kind to brute crea- 
tion. Every once in a while he would make a break 
for solitude or wild freedom, sometimes for a few hours, 
sometimes for days. (He illustrated Plato's rule, that 
to the forming an artist of the very highest rank a 
dash of insanity, or what the world calls insanity, is in- 
dispensable.) He was a small-sized man — yet sharp 
observers noticed that however crowded the stage might 
be in certain scenes, Booth never seem'd overtopt or 
hidden. He was singularly spontaneous and fluctuat- 
ing; in the same part each rendering differ'd from any 
and all others. He had no stereotyped positions and 
made no arbitrary requirements on his fellow - per- 
formers. 

As is well known to old play-goers. Booth's most ef- 
fective part was Richard III. Either that, or lago, or 
Shylock, or Pescara in *' The Apostate," was sure to 
draw a crowded house. (Remember, heavy pieces were 
much more in demand those days than now.) He was 
also unapproachably grand in Sir Giles Overreach, in 
"A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the principal 
character in **The Iron Chest." 

Recalling from that period the occasion of either 
Forrest or Booth, any good night at the old Bowery, 
pack'd from ceiling to pit with its audience mainly of 
alert, well dress'd, full-blooded young and middle- 
aged men, the best average of American-born mechan- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 39 

ics — the emotional nature of the whole mass arous'd 
by the power and magnetism of as mighty mimes as 
ever trod the stage — the whole crowded auditorium, 
and what seeth'd in it, and flush'd from its faces and 
eyes, to me as much a part of the show as any — burst- 
ing forth in one of those long-kept-up tempests of hand- 
clapping peculiar to the Bowery— no dainty kid-glove 
business, but electric force and muscle from perhaps 
2,000 full-sinew'd men — (the inimitable and chromatic 
tempest of one of those ovations to Edwin Forrest, 
welcoming him back after an absence, comes up to me 
this moment) — Such sounds and scenes as here re- 
sumed will surely afford to many old New Yorkers some 
fruitful recollections. 

I can yet remember (for I always scann'd an audience 
as rigidly as a play) the faces of the leading authors, 
poets, editors, of those times — Fenimore Cooper, Bry- 
ant, Paulding, Irving, Charles King, Watson Webb, 
N. P. Willis, Hoffman, Halleck, Mumford, Morris, 
Leggett, L. G. Clarke, R. A. Locke and others, occa- 
sionally peering from the first tier boxes; and even the 
great National Eminences, Presidents Adams, Jackson, 
Van Buren and Tyler, all made short visits there on 
their Eastern tours. 

I happen'd to see what has been reckon'd by experts 
one of the most marvelous pieces of histrionism ever 
known. It must have been about 1834 or '35. A favor- 
ite comedian and actress at the Bowery, Thomas Flynn 
and his wife, were to have a joint benefit, and securing 
Booth for Richard, advertised the fact many days be- 
fore-hand. The house fill'd early from top to bottom. 
There was some uneasiness behind the scenes, for the 



40 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

afternoon arrived, and Booth had not come from down 
in Maryland, where he lived. However, a few minutes 
before ringing-up time he made his appearance in 
lively condition. 

After a one-act farce was over, as contrast and pre- 
lude, the curtain rising for the tragedy, I can, from my 
good seat in the pit, pretty well front, see again Booth's 
quiet entrance from the side, as, with head bent, he 
slowly and in silence, (amid the tempest of boisterous 
hand-clapping,) walks down the stage to the footlights 
with that peculiar and abstracted gesture, musingly 
kicking his sword, which he holds off from him by its 
sash. Though fifty years have pass'd since then, I can 
hear the clank, and feel the perfect following hush of 
perhaps 3,000 people waiting. (I never saw an actor 
who could make more of the said hush or wait, and 
hold the audience in an indescribable, half-delicious, 
half-irritating suspense.) And so throughout the entire 
play, all parts, voice, atmosphere, magnetism, from 

" Now is the winter of our discontent," 

to the closing death fight with Richmond, were of the 
finest and grandest. The latter character was play'd 
by a stalwart young fellow named Ingersoll. Indeed, 
all the renderings were wonderfully good. But the 
great spell cast upon the mass of hearers came from 
Booth. Especially was the dream scene very impress- 
ive. A shudder went through every nervous system in 
the audience; it certainly did through mine. 

Without question Booth was royal heir and legiti- 
mate representative of the Garrick-Kemble-Siddons 
dramatic traditions; but he vitalized and gave an un- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 4I 

luimable race to those traditions witli his own electric 
personal idiosyncrasy. (As in all art-utterance it was the 
subtle and powerful something special to the individital 
that really conquer'd.) 

And so let us turn off the gas. Out in the brilliancy 
of the footlights — filling the attention of perhaps a 
crowded audience, and making many a breath and 
pulse swell and rise — O so much passion and imparted 
life ! — over and over again, the season through — walk- 
ing, gesticulating, singing, reciting his or her part. But 
then sooner or later inevitably wending to the flies or 
exit door — vanishing to sight and ear — and never ma- 
terializing on this earth's stage again ! 

THROUGH EIGHT YEARS 

In 1848, '49, I was occupied as editor of the ''daily 
Eagle " newspaper, in Brooklyn. The latter year went 
off on a leisurely journey and working expedition (my 
brother Jeff with me) through all the middle States, 
and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Lived 
awhile in New Orleans, and work'd there on the edi- 
torial staff of ** daily Crescent" newspaper. After a 
time plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and 
around to, and by way of the great lakes, Michigan, 
Huron, and Erie, to Niagara falls and lower Canada, 
finally returning through central New York and down 
the Hudson; traveling altogether probably 8,000 miles 
this trip, to and fro. '51, '53, occupied in house-build- 
ing in Brooklyn. (For a little of the first part of that 
time in printing a daily and weekly paper, "the Free- 
man.") '55, lost my dear father this year by death. 



42 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

Commenced putting ** Leaves of Grass" to press for 
good, at the job printing office of my friends, the 
brothers Rome, in Brooklyn, after many MS. doings 
and undoings — (I had great trouble in leaving out the 
stock ** poetical" touches, but succeeded at last.) I 
am now (18^6- y) passing through my 37th year. 

STARTING NEWSPAPERS (ANOTHER ACCOUNT) 

Remiiiisceiices — {Fj^oui the ''Cavide7i Cotcrzer.'') — As I 
sat taking my evening sail across the Delaware in the 
staunch ferryboat *' Beverly," a night or two ago, I was 
join'd by two young reporter friends. " I have a mes- 
sage for you," said one of them; "the C. folks told 
me to say they would like a piece sign'd by your name, 
to go in their first number. Can 3^ou do it for them ?" 
*' I guess so," said I; ''what might it be about.^" 
" Well, an3ahing on newspapers,or perhaps what you've 
done yourself, starting them." And off the boys went 
for we had reach'd the Philadelphia side. The hour 
was fine and mild, the bright half-moon shining; Ve- 
nus, with excess of splendor, just setting in the west, 
and the great Scorpion rearing its length more than 
half up in the southeast. As I cross'd leisurely for an 
hour in the pleasant night-scene, my young friend's 
words brought up quite a string of reminiscences. 

I commenced when I was but a boy of eleven or 
twelve writing sentimental bits for the old " Long Isl- 
and Patriot," in Brooklyn; this was about 1832. Soon 
after, I had a piece or two in George P. Morris's then 
celebrated and fashionable ** Mirror," of New York 
city. I remember with what half-suppress'd excitement 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 43 

I used to watch for the big, fat, red-faced, slow-mov- 
ing, very old English carrier who distributed the "Mir- 
ror" in Brooklyn; and when I got one, opening and 
cutting the leaves with trembling fingers. How it 
made my heart double-beat to see ;;// piece on the 
pretty white paper, in nice type. 

My first real venture was the " Long Islander," in 
my own beautiful town of Huntington, in 1839. 1 was 
about twenty years old. I had been teaching country 
school for two or three years in various parts of Suffolk 
and Queens counties, but liked printing; had been at 
it while a lad, learn'd the trade of compositor, and was 
encouraged to start a paper in the region where I was 
born. I went to New York, bought a press and types, 
hired some little help, but did most of the work my- 
self, including the press-work. Everything seem'd 
turning out well; (only my own restlessness prevented 
me gradually establishing a permanent property there.) 
I bought a good horse, and every week went all round 
the country serving my papers, devoting one day and 
night to it. I never had happier jaunts — going over 
to south side, to Babylon, down the south road, across 
to Smithtown and Comae, and back home. The ex- 
periences of those jaunts, the dear old-fashion'd farm- 
ers and their wives, the stops by the hay-fields, the 
hospitality, nice dinners, occasional evenings, the 
girls, the rides through the brush, come up in miy mem- 
ory to this day. 

I next went to the "Aurora" daily in New York 
city — a sort of free lance. Also wrote regularly for the 
"Tattler," an evening paper. With these and a little 
outside work I was occupied off and on, until I went 



44 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

to edit the *' Brooklyn Eagle," where for two years I 
had one of the pleasantest sits of my life — a good own- 
er, good pay, and easy work and hours. The troubles 
in the Democratic party broke forth about those times 
(1848-49) and I split off with the radicals, which led 
to rows with the boss and " the party," and I lost my 
place. 

Being now out of a job, I was offer'd impromptu, (it 
happen'd between the acts one night in the lobby of 
the old Broadway theatre near Pearl street, New York 
city,) a good chance to go down to New Orleans on 
the staff of the ''Crescent," a daily to be started there 
with plenty of capital behind it. One of the owners, 
who was north buying material, met me walking in the 
lobby, and though that was our first acquaintance, af- 
ter fifteen minutes' talk (and a drink) we made a form- 
al bargain, and he paid me two hundred dollars down 
to bind the contract and bear my expenses to New Or- 
leans. I started two days afterwards; had a good 
leisurely time, as the paper wasn't to be out in three 
weeks. I enjoy'd my journey and Louisiana life much. 
Returning to Brooklyn a year or two afterwards, I 
started the ''Freeman," first as a weekly, then daily. 
Pretty soon the secession v^ar broke out, and I, too, 
got drawn in the current southward, and spent the fol- 
lowing three years there. 

Besides starting them as aforementioned, I have had 
to do, one time or another, during my life, with a 
long list of papers, at divers places, sometimes under 
queer circumstances. During the war, the hospitals at 
Washington, among other means of amusement, print- 
ed a little sheet among themselves, surrounded by 



AUTOBTOGRAPHIA 45 

wounds and death, the ** Armory Square Gazette," to 
which I contributed. The same long afterward, casu- 
ally, to a paper — I think it was call'd the **Jimplecute" 
— out in Colorado where 1 stopp'd at the time. When 
I was in Quebec province, in Canada, in 1880, I went 
into the queerest little old French printing office near 
Tadousac. It was far more primitive and ancient than 
my Camden friend William Kurtz's place up on Feder- 
al street. I remember, as a youngster, several charac- 
teristic old printers of a kind hard to be seen these 
days. 

FIRST GLIMPSE OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

I shall not easily forget the first time I ever saw 
Abraham Lincoln. It must have been about the i8th 
or 19th of February, 1861. It was rather a pleasant 
afternoon, in New York city, as he arrived there from 
the West, to remain a few hours, and then pass on to 
Washington, to prepare for his inauguration. I saw 
him in Broadway, near the site of the present Post- 
office. He came down, I think from Canal street, to 
stop at the Astor House. The broad spaces, sidewalks, 
and street in the neighborhood, and for some distance, 
were crowded with solid masses of people, many thou- 
sands. The omnibuses and other vehicles had all been 
turn'd off, leaving an unusual hush in that busy part 
of the city. Presently two or three shabby hack ba- 
rouches made their way with some difficulty through 
the crowd, and drew up at the Astor House entrance. 
A tall figure step'd out of the centre of these barouches, 
paus'd leisurely on the sidewalk, look'd up at the gran- 



46 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

ite walls and looming architecture of the grand old 
hotel — then, after a relieving stretch of arms and legs, 
turn'd round for over a minute to slowly and good- 
humoredly scan the appearance of the vast and silent 
crowds. There were no speeches — no compliments — 
no welcome — as far as I could hear, not a word said. 
Still much anxiety was conceal'd in that quiet. Cau- 
tious persons had fear'd some mark'd insult or indig- 
nity to the President-elect — for he possess'd no personal 
popularity at all in New York city, and very little po- 
litical. But it was evidently tacitly agreed that if the 
few political supporters of Mr. Lincoln present would 
entirely abstain from any demonstration on their side, 
the immense majority, who were anything but sup- 
porters, would abstain on their side also. The result 
was a sulky, unbroken silence, such as certainly never 
before characterized so great a New York crowd. 

Almost in the same neighborhood I distinctly re- 
member'd seeing Lafayette on his visit to America in 
1825. I had also personally seen and heard, various 
years afterward, how Andrew Jackson, Clay, Webster, 
Hungarian Kossuth, Filibuster Walker, the Prince of 
Wales on his visit, and other celebres, native and for- 
eign, had been welcom'd there — all that indescribable 
human roar and magnetism, unlike any other sound in 
the universe — the glad exulting thunder-shouts of 
countless unloos'd throats of men ! But on this occa- 
sion, not a voice — not a sound. From the top of an 
omnibus, (driven up one side, close by, and block'd by 
the curbstone and the crowds,) I had, I say, a capital 
view of it all, and especially of Mr. Lincoln, his look 
and gait — his perfect composure and coolness — his un- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 47 

usual and uncouth height, his dress of complete black, 
stovepipe hat push'd back on the head, dark-brown 
complexion, seam'd and wrinkled yet canny-looking 
face, black, bushy head of hair, disproportionately 
long neck, and his hands held .behind as he stood ob- 
serving the people. He look'd with curiosity upon that 
immense sea of faces, and the sea of faces return'd the 
look with similar curiosity. In both there was a dash 
of comedy, almost farce, such as Shakspere puts in his 
blackest tragedies. The crowd that hemm'd around 
consisted I should think of thirty to forty thousand men, 
not a single one his personal friend — while I have no 
doubt, (so frenzied were the ferments of the time,) many 
an assassin's knife and pistol lurk'd in hip or breast- 
pocket there, ready, soon as break and riot came. 

But no break or riot came. The tall figure gave 
another relieving stretch or two of arms and legs ; then 
with moderate pace, and accompanied by a few un- 
known looking persons, ascended the portico-steps of 
the Astor House, disappear'd through its broad en- 
trance — and the dumb-show ended. 

SOURCES OF CHARACTER— RESULTS— 1860 

To sum up the foregoing from the outset (and, of 
course, far, far more unrecorded,) I estimate three 
leading sources and formative stamps to my own char- 
acter, now solidified for good or bad, and its subse- 
quent literary and other outgrowth — the maternal na- 
tivity-stock brought hither from far-away Netherlands, 
for one, (doubtless the best) — the subterranean tenacity 
and central bony structure (obstinacy, wilfulness) which 



48 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

I get from my paternal English elements, for another 
— and the combination of my Long Island birth-spot, 
sea-shores, childhood's scenes, absorptions, with teem- 
ing Brooklyn and New York — with, I suppose, my 
experiences afterward in the secession outbreak, for 
the third. 

For, in 1862, startled by news that my brother 
George, an officer in the 51st New York volunteers, 
had been seriously wounded (first Fredericksburg bat- 
tle, December 13th,) I hurriedly went down to the field 
of war in Virginia. But I must go back a little. 

OPENING OF THE SECESSION WAR 

News of the attack on fort Sumter and the flag at 
Charleston harbor, S. C, was received in New York 
city late at night (13th April, 1861,) and was immedi- 
ately sent out in extras of the newspapers. I had been 
to the opera in Fourteenth street that night, and after 
the performance was walking down Broadway toward 
twelve o'clock, on my way to Brooklyn, when I heard 
in the distance the loud cries of the newsboys, who 
came presently tearing and yelling up the street, rush- 
ing from side to side even more furiously than usual. 
I bought an extra and cross'd to the Metropolitan Ho- 
tel (Niblo's) where the great lamps were still brightly 
blazing, and, with a crowd of others, who gather'd im- 
promptu, read the news, which was evidently authentic. 
For the benefit of some who had no papers, one of us 
read the telegram aloud, while all listen'd silently and 
attentively. No remark was made by any of the crowd, 
which had increas'd to thirty or forty, but all stood a 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 49 

minute or two, I remember, before they dispers'd. I 
can almost see them there now, under the lamps at 
midnight again. 

CONTEMPTUOUS FEELING 

Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, 
the gravity of the revolt, and the power and will of the 
slave States for a strong and continued military resist- 
ance to national authority, were not at all realized at 
the North, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the peo- 
ple of the free States look'd upon the rebellion, as 
started in South Carolina, from a feeling one-half of 
contempt, and the other half composed of anger and 
incredulity. It was not thought it would be join'd in 
by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and 
cautious national official predicted that it would blow 
over ** in sixty days," and folks generally believ'd the 
prediction. I remember talking about it on a Fulton 
ferryboat with the Brooklyn mayor, who said he only 
** hoped the Southern fire-eaters would commit some 
overt act of resistance, as they would then be at once 
so effectually squelch'd, we would never hear of seces- 
sion again — but he was afraid they never would have 
the pluck to really do anything." I remember, too, that 
a couple of companies of the Thirteenth Brooklyn, who 
rendezvou'd at the city armory, and started thence as 
thirty days' men, were all provided with pieces of rope, 
conspicuously tied to their musket-barrels, with which 
to bring back each man a prisoner from the audacious 
South, to be led in a noose, on our men's early and 
triumphant return ! 



50 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY, 1861 

All this sort of feeling was destin'd to be arrested 
and revers'd by a terrible shock — the battle of first Bull 
Run — certainly, as we now know it, one of the most 
singular fights on record. (All battles, and their re- 
sults, are far more matters of accident than is generally 
thought ; but this was throughout a casualty, a chance. 
Each side supposed it had won, till the last moment. 
One had, in point of fact, just the same right to be 
routed as the other. By a fiction, or series of fictions, 
the national forces at the last moment exploded in a 
panic and fled from the field.) The defeated troops 
commenced pouring into Washington over the Long 
Bridge at daylight on Monday, 226. — day drizzling all 
through with rain. The Saturday and Sunday of the 
battle (20th, 2ist,) had been parch'd and hot to an ex- 
treme — the dust, the grime and smoke, in layers, 
sweated in, follow'd by other layers again sweated in, 
absorb'd by those excited souls — their clothes all sat- 
urated with the clay-powder filUng the air — stirr'd up 
everywhere on the dry roads and trodden fields by the 
regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, &c. — all the 
men with this coating of murk and sweat and rain, now 
recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge — a hor- 
rible march of twenty miles, returning to Washington 
baffled, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, 
and the proud boasts with which you went forth ? 
Where are your banners, and your bands of music, and 
your ropes to bring back your prisoners? Well, there 
isn't a band playing — and there isn't a flag but clings 
ashamed and lank to its staff. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 51 

Meantime, in Washington, among the great persons 
and their entourage, a mixture of awful consternation, 
uncertainty, rage, shame, helplessness, and stupefying 
disappointment. The worst is not only imminent, but 
already here. In a few hours — perhaps before the 
next meal — the secesh generals, with their victorious 
hordes, will be upon us. The dream of humanity, the 
vaunted Union we thought so strong, so impregnable 
— lo ! it seems already smash'd like a china plate. 
One bitter, bitter hour — perhaps proud America will 
never again know such an hour. She must pack and 
fly — no time to spare. Those white palaces — the dome- 
crown'd capitol there on the hill, so stately over the 
trees — shall they be left — or destroy 'd first ? For it is 
certain that the talk among certain of the magnates and 
officers and clerks and officials everywhere, for twenty- 
four hours in and around Washington after Bull Run, 
was loud and undisguised for yielding out and out, and 
substituting the southern rule, and Lincoln promptly 
abdicating and departing. If the secesh officers and 
forces had immediately followed, and by a bold Napo- 
leonic movement had enter'd Washington the first 
day, (or even the second,) they could have had things 
their own way, and a powerful faction north to back 
them. One of our returning colonels express'd in pub- 
lic that night, amid a swarm of officers and gentlemen 
in a crowded room, the opinion that it was useless to 
fight, that the southerners had made their title clear, 
and that the best course for the national government 
to pursue was to desist from any further attempt at 
stopping them, and admit them again to the lead, on 
the best terms they were willing to grant. Not a voice 



52 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

was rais'd against this judgment, amid that large 
crowd of officers and gentlemen. (The fact is, the 
hour was one of the three or four of those crises we 
had then and afterward, during the fluctuations of four 
years, when human eyes appear'd at least just as likely 
to see the last breath of the Union as to see it con- 
tinue.) 

THE STUPOR PASSES— SOMETHING ELSE 
BEGINS 

But the hour, the day, the night pass'd, and what- 
ever returns, an hour, a day, a night like that can 
never again return. The President, recovering him- 
self, begins that very night — sternly, rapidly sets about 
the task of reorganizing his forces, and placing him- 
self in positions for future and surer work. If there 
were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to 
stamp him with, it is enough to send him with his 
wreath to the memory of all future time, that he en- 
dured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall — indeed a 
crucifixion day — that it did not conquer him — that he 
unflinchingly stemm'd it, and resolv'd to lift himself 
and the Union out of it. 

Then the great New York papers at once appear'd, 
(commencing that evening, and following it up the 
next morning, and incessantly through many days 
afterwards,) with leaders that rang out over the land 
with the loudest, most reverberating ring of clearest 
bugles, full of encouragement, hope, inspiration, un- 
faltering defiance. Those magnificent editorials ! they 
never flagg'd for a fortnight. The *' Herald " com- 
menced them — I remember the articles well. The 



AUTOBIOGRAPIIIA 53 

"Tribune" was equally cogent and inspiriting — and 
the ''Times," "Evening Post," and other principal 
papers, were not a whit behind. They came in good 
time, for they were needed. For in the humiliation of 
Bull Run, the popular feeling north, from its extreme 
of superciliousness, recoil'd to the depth of gloom and 
apprehension. 

(Of all the days of the war, there are two especially 
I can never forget. Those were the day following the 
news, in New York and Brooklyn, of that first Bull Run 
defeat, and the day of Abraham Lincoln's death. I 
was home in Brooklyn on both occasions. The day 
of the murder we heard the news very early in the 
morning. Mother prepared breakfast — and other 
meals afterward — as usual; but not a mouthful was eat- 
en all day by either of us. We each drank half a cup 
of coffee; that was all. Little was said. We got every 
newspaper morning and evening, and the frequent 
extras of that period, and pass'd them silently to each 
other.) 

DOWN AT THE FRONT 

Falmouth, Va., opposite Fredericksburg , December 
21, 1862. — Begin my visits among camp hospitals in 
the army of the Potomac. Spend a good part of the 
day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the Rap- 
pahannock, used as a hospital since the battle — seems 
to have receiv'd only the worst cases. Out doors, at 
the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front of the 
house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, 
hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart. Several 
dead bodies lie near, each cover'd with its brown wool- 



54 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

en blanket. In the door-yard, towards the river, are 
fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces 
of barrel-staves or broken boards, stuck in the dirt. 
(Most of these bodies were subsequently taken up and 
transported north to their friends.) The large man- 
sion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything 
impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no 
doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds pretty 
bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, un- 
clean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel 
soldiers and officers; prisoners. One, a Mississippian, 
a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk'd with some time: he 
ask'd me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him 
three months afterward in Washington, with his leg 
amputated, doing well.) I went through the rooms, 
downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying. I 
had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few let- 
ters to folks home, mothers, &c. Also talk'd to three 
or four, who seem'd most susceptible to it, and need- 
ing it. 

AFTER FIRST FREDERICKSBURG 

December 2j to ji. — The results of the late battle are 
exhibited everywhere about here in thousands of cases, 
(hundreds die every day,) in the camp, brigade, and 
division hospitals. These are merely tents, and some- 
times very poor ones, the wounded lying on the 
ground, lucky if their blankets are spread on layers of 
pine or hemlock twigs, or small leaves. No cots; sel- 
dom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The ground 
is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow. I go 
around from one case to another. I do not see that I 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 55 

do much good to these wounded and dying; but I can- 
not leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds 
on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at 
any rate, stop with him and sit near him for hours, if 
he wishes it. 

Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long 
tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. 
Sometimes . at night among the groups around the 
fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. These 
are curious shows, full of characters and groups. I 
soon get acquinted anywhere in camp, with officers or 
men, and am always well used. Sometimes I go down 
on picket with the regiments I know best. As to ra- 
tions, the army here at present seems to be tolerably 
well supplied, and the men have enough, such as it is, 
mainly salt pork and hard tack. Most of the regiments 
lodge in the flimsy little shelter-tents. A few have 
built themselves huts of logs and mud, with fire-places. 

BACK TO WASHINGTON 

January, *6j. — Left camp at Falmouth, with some 
wounded, a few days since, and came here by Aquia 
creek railroad, and so on government steamer up the 
Potomac. Many wounded were with us on the cars 
and boat. The cars were just common platform ones. 
The railroad journey of ten or twelve miles was made 
mostly before sunrise. The soldiers guarding the road 
came out from their tents or shebangs of bushes with 
rumpled hair and half-awake look. Those on duty 
were w^alking their posts, some on banks over us, oth- 
ers down far below the level of the track. I saw large 



56 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

cavalry camps off the road. At Aquia creek landing 
were numbers of wounded going north. While I wait- 
ed some three hours, 1 went around among them. 
Several wanted word sent home to parents, brothers, 
wives, &c., which I did for them, (by mail the next day 
from Washington.) On the boat I had my hands full. 
One poor fellow died going up. 

I am now remaining in and around Washington, 
daily visiting the hospitals. Am much in Patent-office, 
Eighth street, H street, Armory-square, and others. 
Am now able to do a little good, having money, (as 
almoner of others home,) and getting experience. 
To-day, Sunday afternoon and till nine in the evening, 
visited Campbell hospital; attended specially to one 
case in ward i, very sick with pleurisy and typhoid 
fever, young man, farmer's son, D. F. Russell, com- 
pany E, 6oth New York, downhearted and feeble; a 
long time before he would take any interest; wrote a 
letter home to his mother, in Malone, Franklin coun- 
ty, N. Y., at his request; gave him some fruit and one 
or two other gifts; envelop'd and directed his letter, 
&c. Then went thoroughly through ward 6, observ'd 
every case in the ward, without, I think, missing one, 
gave perhaps from twenty to thirty persons, each one 
some little gift, such as oranges, apples, sweet crack- 
ers, figs, &c. 

Thursday, Jajt. 2i. — Devoted the main part of the 
day to Armory-square hospital ; went pretty thorough- 
ly through wards F, G, H, and I; some fifty cases in 
each ward. In ward F supplied the men throughout 
with writing paper and stamp'd envelope each; distrib- 
uted in small portions, to proper subjects, a large jar 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 5/ 

of first-rate preserv'd berries, which had been donated 
to me by a lady — her own cooking. ' Found several 
cases I thought good subjects for small sums of money, 
which I furnish'd. (The wcanded men often come up 
broke, and it helps their spirits to have even the small 
sum I give them.) My paper and envelopes all gone, 
but distributed a good lot of amusing reading matter; 
also, as I thought judicious, tobacco, oranges, apples, 
&c. Interesting cases in ward I; Charles Miller, bed 
19, company D, 53d Pennsylvania, is only sixteen years 
of age, very bright, courageous boy, left leg amputated 
below the knee; next bed to him, another young lad 
very sick; gave each appropriate gifts. In the bed 
above, also, amputation of the left leg; gave him a lit- 
tle jar of raspberries; bed I, this ward, gave a small 
sum; also to a soldier on crutches, sitting on his bed 
near. ... (I am more and more surprised at the very 
great proportion of youngsters from fifteen to twenty- 
one in the army. I afterwards found a still greater 
proportion among the southerners.) 

Evening, same day, went to see D. F. R., before al- 
luded to; found him remarkably changed for the bet- 
ter; up and dress'd — quite a triumph; he afterwards 
got well, and went back to his regiment. Distributed 
in the wards a quantity of note-paper, and forty or fif- 
ty stamp'd envelopes, of which I had recruited my 
stock, and the men were much in need. 

HOSPITAL SCENES AND PERSONS 

Letter Writmg. — When eligible, I encourage the 
men to write, and myself, when called upon, write all 



58 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

sorts of letters for them, (including love letters, very 
tender ones.) Almost as I reel off these memoranda, 
I write for a new patient to his wife. M. de F., of the 
17th Connecticut, company H, has just come up (Feb- 
ruary 17th) from Windmill point, and is received in 
ward H, Armory-square. He is an intelligent looking 
man, has a foreign accent, black-eyed and hair'd, a 
Hebraic appearance. Wants a telegraphic message 
sent to his wife. New Canaan, Conn. I agree to send 
the message — but to make things sure I also sit down 
and write the wife a letter, and despatch it to the post- 
office immediately, as he fears she will come on, and 
he does not wish her to, as he will surely get well. 

Saturday, J amcary jot h, — Afternoon, visited Camp- 
bell hospital. Scene of cleaning up the ward, and giv- 
ing the men all clean clothes — through the ward (6) 
the patients dressing or being dress'd — the naked up- 
per half of the bodies — the good-humor and fun — the 
shirts, drawers, sheets of beds, &c., and the general 
fixing up for Sunday. Gave J. L. 50 cents. 

Wed7iesday, February 4th. — Visited Armory-square 
hospital, went pretty thoroughly through wards E and 
D. Supplied paper and envelopes to all who wish'd — 
as usual, found plenty of men who needed those arti- 
cles. Wrote letters. Saw and talk'd with two or 
three members of the Brooklyn 14th regt. A poor fel- 
low in ward D, with a fearful wound in a fearful con- 
dition, was having some loose splinters of bone taken 
from the neighborhood of the wound. The operation 
was long, and one of great pain — yet, after it was well 
commenced, the soldier bore it in silence. He sat up, 
propp'd — was much wasted — had lain a long time quiet 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 59 

in 'one position (not for days only but weeks,) a blood- 
less, brown-skinn'd face, with eyes full of determina- 
tion — belong'd to a New York regiment. There was 
an unusual cluster of surgeons, medical cadets, nurses, 
&c., around his bed — I thought the whole thing was 
done with tenderness, and done well. In one case, the 
wife sat by the side of her husband, his sickness ty- 
phoid fever, pretty bad. In another, by the side of 
her son, a mother — she told me she had seven children, 
and this was the youngest. (A fine, kind, healthy, 
gentle mother, good-looking, not very old, with a cap 
on her head, and dress'd like home — what a charm it 
gave to the whole ward.) I liked the woman nurse in 
ward E — I noticed how she sat a long time by a poor 
fellow who just had, that morning, in addition to his 
other sickness, bad hemorrhage — she gently assisted 
him, reliev'd him of the blood, holding a cloth to his 
mouth, as he coughed it up — he was so weak he could 
only just turn his head over on the pillow. 

One young New York man, with a bright, handsome 
face, had been lying several months from a most dis- 
agreeable wound, received at Bull Run. A bullet had 
shot him right through the bladder, hitting him front, 
low in the belly, and coming out back. He had suf- 
fer'd much — the water came out of the wound, by 
slow but steady quantities, for many weeks — so that he 
lay almost constantly in a sort of puddle — and there 
were other disagreeable circumstances. He v/as of 
good heart, however. At present comparatively com- 
fortable, had a bad throat, was delighted with a stick 
of horehound candy I gave him, with one or two other 
trifles. 



6o AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

PATENT-OFFICE HOSPITAL 

February 2j. — I must not let the great hospital at 
the Patent-office pass away without some mention. A 
few weeks ago the vast area of the second story of that 
noblest of Washington buildings was crowded close 
with rows of sick, badly wounded and dying soldiers. 
They were placed in three very large apartments. I 
went there many times. It was a strange, solemn, 
and, with all its features of suffering and death, a sort 
of fascinating sight. I go sometimes at night to soothe 
and relieve particular cases. Two of the immense 
apartments are fill'd with high and ponderous glass 
cases, crowded with models in miniature of every kind 
of utensil, machine or invention, it ever enter'd into 
the mind of man to conceive; and with curiosities and 
foreign presents. Between these cases are lateral 
openings, perhaps eight feet wide and quite deep, and 
in these were placed the sick, besides a great long 
double row of them up and down through the middle 
of the hall. Many of them were very bad cases, 
wounds and amputations. Then there was a gallery 
running above the hall in which there were beds also. 
It was, indeed, a curious scene, especially at night 
when lit up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms ly- 
ing there, the gallery above, and the marble pavement 
under foot — the suffering, and the fortitude to bear it 
in various degrees — occasionally, from some, the groan 
that could not be repress'd — sometimes ^ poor fellow 
dying, with emaciated face and glassy eye, the nurse 
by his side, the doctor also there, but no friend, no 
relative — such were the sights but lately in the Patent- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 6l 

office. (The wounded have since been removed from 
there, and it is now vacant' again.) 

AN ARMY HOSPITAL WARD 

Let me specialize a visit I made to the collection of 
barrack-like one-story edifices, Campbell hospital, out 
on the flats, at the end of the then horse railway route, 
on Seventh street. There is a long building appropri- 
ated to each ward. Let us go into ward 6. It contains 
to-day, I should judge, eighty or a hundred patients, 
half sick, half wounded. The edifice is nothing but 
boards, well whitewash'd inside, and the usual slender- 
framed iron bedsteads, narrow and plain. You walk 
down the central passage, with a row on either side, 
their feet towards you, and their heads to the wall. 
There are fires in large stoves, and the prevailing white 
of the walls is reliev'd by some ornaments, stars, cir- 
cles, &c., made of evergreens. The view of the whole 
edifice and occupants can be taken at once, for there 
is no partition. You may hear groans or other sounds 
of unendurable suffering from two or three of the cots, 
but in the main there is quiet — almost a painful ab- 
sence of demonstration; but the pallid face, the dull'd 
eye, and the moisture on the lip, are demonstration 
enough. Most of these sick or hurt are evidently 
young fellows from the country, farmers' sons, and such 
like. Look at the fine large frames, the bright and 
broad countenances, and the many yet lingering proofs 
of strong constitution and physique. Look at the 
patient and mute manner of our American wounded 
as they lie in such a sad collection; representatives 
from all New England, and from New York, and New 



62 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

Jersey, and Pennsylvania — indeed from all the States 
and all the cities — largely from the west. Most of 
them are entirely without friends or acquaintances 
here — no familiar face, and hardly a word of judicious 
sympathy or cheer, through their sometimes long and 
tedious sickness, or the pangs of aggravated wounds. 

A SECESH BRAVE 

The grand soldiers are not comprised in those of one 
side, any more than the other. Here is a sample of an 
unknown southerner, a lad of seventeen. At the War 
department, a few days ago, I witness'd a presentation 
of captured flags to the Secretary. Among others a 
soldier named Gant, of the 104th Ohio volunteers, pre- 
sented a rebel battle-flag, which one of the officers 
stated to me was borne to the mouth of our cannon and 
planted there by a boy but seventeen years of age, who 
actually endeavor'd to stop the muzzle of the gun with 
fence-rails. He was kill'd in the effort, and the flag- 
staff was sever'd by a shot from one of our men. 

THE WOUNDED FROM CHANCELLORSVILLE 

May, '6j. — As I write this, the wounded have begun 
to arrive from Hooker's command from bloody Chan- 
cellorsville. I was down among the first arrivals. The 
men in charge told me the bad cases were yet to come. 
If that is so I pity them, for these are bad enough. 
You ought to see the scene of the wounded arriving 
at the landing here at the foot of Sixth street, at 
night. Two boat loads came about j yi last night. 
A little after 8 it rain'd a long and violent shower. 
The pale, helpless soldiers had been debark'd, and lay 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 63 

around on the wharf and neighborhood anywhere. 
The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any rate 
they were exposed to it. The few torches light up the 
spectacle. All around — on the wharf, on the ground, 
out on side places — the men are lying on blankets, old 
quilts, &c., with bloody rags bound round heads, arms, 
and legs. The attendants are few, and at night few 
outsiders also — only a few hard-work'd transportation 
men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be 
common, and people grow callous.) The men, what- 
ever their condition, lie there, and patiently wait till 
their turn comes to be taken up. Near by, the ambu- 
lances are now arriving in clusters, and one after an- 
other is call'd to back up and take its load. Extreme 
cases are sent off on stretchers. The men generally 
make little or no ado, whatever their sufferings. A few 
groans that cannot be suppressed, and occasionally a 
scream of pain as they lift a man into the ambulance. 
To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and 
to-morrow and the next day more, and so on for many 
days. Quite often they arrive at the rate of i ,000 a day. 

MY PREPARATIONS FOR VISITS 

In my visits to the hospitals I found it was in the 
simple matter of personal presence, and emanating 
ordinary cheer and magnetism, that I succeeded and 
help'd more than by medical nursing, or delicacies, or 
gifts of money, or anything else. During the war I 
possess'd the perfection of physical health. My habit, 
when practicable, was to prepare for starting out on 
one of those daily or nightly tours of from a couple to 
four or five hours, by fortifying myself with previous 



64 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

rest, the bath, clean clothes, a good meal, and as 
cheerful an appearance as possible. 

A NEW YORK SOLDIER 

This afternoon, July 22d, I have spent a long time 
with Oscar F. Wilber, company G, 154th New York, 
low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound also. 
He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testa- 
ment. I complied, and ask'd him what I should read. 
He said, '* Make your own choice." 1 open'd at the 
close of one of the first books of the evangelists, and 
read the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ, 
and the scenes at the crucifixion. The poor, wasted 
young man ask'd me to read the following chapter 
also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, for 
Oscar was feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the 
tears were in his eyes. He ask'd me if I enjoy 'd relig- 
ion. I said, *' Perhaps not, my dear, in fhe way you 
mean, and yet, may-be, it is the same thing." He 
said, ''It is my chief reliance." He talk'd of death, 
and said he did not fear it. I said, **Why, Oscar, 
don't you think you will get well ? " He said, " I may, 
but it is not probable." He spoke calmly of his condi- 
tion. The wound was very bad, it discharg'd much. 
Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that 
he was even then the same as dying. He behaved 
very manly and affectionate. The kiss I gave him as 
I was about leaving he return'd fourfold. He gave me 
his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Allegany 
post-office, Cattaraugus county, N. Y. I had several 
such interviews with him. He died a few days after 
the one just described. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 65 

HOME-MADE MUSIC 

August 8th, — To-night, as I was trying to keep cool, 
sitting by a wounded soldier in Armory-square, I was 
attracted by some pleasant singing in an adjoining 
ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and enter- 
ing the ward where the music was, I walk'd half-way 
down and took a seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn 
friend, S. R., badly wounded in the hand at Chancel- 
lorsville, and who has suffer'd much, but at that mo- 
ment in the evening was wide awake and comparatively 
easy. He had turn'd over on his left side to get a bet- 
ter view of the singers, but the mosquito-curtains of 
the adjoining cots obstructed the sight. I stept round 
and loop'd them all up, so that he had a clear show,and 
then sat down again by him, and look'd and listened. 
The principal singer was a young lady-nurse of one of 
the wards, accompanying on a melodeon, and join'd 
by the lady-nurses of other wards. They sat there, 
making a charming group, with their handsome, healthy 
faces, and standing up a little behind them were some 
ten or fifteen of the convalescent soldiers, young men, 
nurses, &c., with books in their hands, singing. Of 
course it was not such a performance as the great solo- 
ists at the New York opera house take a hand in, yet I am 
not sure but I receiv'd as much pleasure under the circum- 
stances, sitting there, as I have had from the best Ital- 
ian compositions, express'd by world-famous perform- 
ers. The men lying up and down the hospital, in 
their cots, (some badly wounded — some never to rise 
thence,) the cots themselves, with their drapery of 
white curtains, and the shadows down the lower and 



66 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

upper parts of the ward; then the silence of the men, 
and the attitudes they took — the whole was a sight to 
look around upon again and again. And there sweetly- 
rose those voices up to the high, whitewash'd wooden 
roof, and pleasantly the roof sent it all back again. 
They sang very well, mostly quaint old songs and de- 
clamatory hymns, to fitting tunes. Here, for in- 
stance: 

My days are swiftly gliding by, and I a pilgrim stranger, 
Would not detain them as they fly, those hours of toil and 

danger; 
For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing 

over, 
And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover. 

We'll gird our loins my brethren dear, our distant home 
discerning, 

Our absent Lord has left us word, let every lamp be burn- 
ing; 

For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing 
over, 

And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
August I2th. — I see the President almost every day, 
as I happen to live where he passes to or from his 
lodgings out of town. He never sleeps at the White 
House during the hot season, but has quarters at a 
healthy location some three miles north of the city, 
the Soldiers' home, a United States military establish- 
ment. I saw him this morning about Zyi coming in to 
business, riding on Vermont avenue, near L street. 
He always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cav- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 6^ 

airy, with sabres drawn and held upright over their 
shoulders. They say this guard was against his per- 
sonal wish, but he let his counselors have their way. 
The party makes no great show in uniform or horses. 
Mr. Lincoln on the saddle generally rides a good-sized, 
easy-going gray horse, is dress'd in plain black, some- 
what rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and looks 
about as ordinary in attire, &c., as the commonest 
man. A lieutenant, with yellow straps, rides at his 
left, and following behind, two by two, come the cav- 
alry men, in their yellow-striped jackets. They are gen- 
erally going at a slow trot, as that is the pace set them 
by the one they wait upon. The sabres and accoutre- 
ments clank, and the entirely unornamental cortege as 
it trots towards Lafayette square arouses no sensation, 
only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see very 
plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face, with the 
deep-cut lines, the eyes, always to me with a deep la- 
tent sadness in the expression. We have got so that 
we exchange bows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes 
the President goes and comes in an open barouche. 
The cavalry always accompany him, with drawn sabres. 
Often 1 notice as he goes out evenings — and sometimes 
in the morning, when he returns early — he turns off 
and halts at the large and handsome residence of the 
Secretary of War, on K street, and holds conference 
there. If in his barouche, I can see from my window 
he does not alight, but sits in his vehicle, and Mr. 
Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of 
his sons, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, rid- 
ing at his right on a pony. Earlier in the summer I 
occasionally saw the President and his wife, toward 



68 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

the latter part of the afternoon, out in a barouche, on 
a pleasure ride through the city. Mrs. Lincoln was 
dress'd in complete black, with a long crape veil. The 
equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses, and 
they nothing extra. They pass'd me once very close, 
and I saw the President in the face fully, as they were 
moving slowly, and his look, though abstracted, hap- 
pen 'd to be directed steadily in my eye. He bow'd and 
smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well the ex- 
pression I have alluded to. None of the artists or pic- 
tures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect 
expression of this man's face. There is something else 
there. One of the great portrait painters of two or 
three centuries ago is needed. 

DEATH OF A WISCONSIN OFFICER 

Another characteristic scene of that dark and bloody 
1863, from notes of my visit to Armory-square hospi- 
tal, one hot but pleasant summer day. In ward H we 
approach the cot of a young lieutenant of one of the 
Wisconsin regiments. Tread the bare floor lightly 
here, for the pain and panting of death are in this cot. 
I saw the lieutenant when he was first brought here 
from Chancellorsville, and have been with him occa;- 
sionally from day to day and night to night. He had 
been getting along pretty wxll till night before last, 
when a sudden hemorrhage that could not be stopt 
came upon him, and to-day it still continues at inter- 
vals. Notice that water-pail by the side of the bed, 
with a quantity of blood and bloody pieces of muslin, 
nearly full ; that tells the story. The poor young man 
is struggling painfully for breath, his great dark eyes 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 69 

with a glaze already upon them, and the choking faint 
but audible in his throat. An attendant sits by him, 
and will not leave him till the last ; yet little or noth- 
ing can be done. He will die here in an hour or two, 
without the presence of kith or kin. Meantime the 
ordinary chat and business of the ward a little way off 
goes on indifferently. Some of the inmates are laugh- 
ing and joking, others are playing checkers or cards, 
others are reading, &c. 

I have noticed through most of the hospitals that as 
long as there is any chance for a man, no matter how 
bad he may be, the surgeon and nurses work hard, 
sometimes with curious tenacity, for his life, doing 
everything, and keeping somebody by him to execute 
the doctor's orders, and minister to him every minute 
night and day. See that screen there. As you ad- 
vance through the dusk of early candle-light, a nurse 
will step forth on tip-toe, and silently but imperiously 
forbid you to make any noise, or perhaps to come 
near at all. Some soldier's life is flickering there, sus- 
pended between recovery and death. Perhaps at this 
moment the exhausted frame has just fallen into a light 
sleep that a step might shake. You must retire. The 
neighboring patients must move in their stocking feet. 
I have been several times struck with such mark'd ef- 
forts — everything bent to save a life from the very grip 
of the destroyer. But when that grip is once firmly 
fix'd, leaving no hope or chance at all, the surgeon 
abandons the patient. If it is a case where stim- 
ulus is any relief, the nurse gives milk-punch or brandy, 
or whatever is wanted, ad libitum. There is no fuss 
made. Not a bit of sentimentalism or whining have I 



JO AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

seen about a single death-bed in hospital or on the 
field, but generally impassive indifference. All is over, 
as far as any efforts can avail ; it is useless to expend 
emotions or labors. While there is a prospect they 
strive hard — at least most surgeons do ; but death cer- 
tain and evident, they yield the field. 

HOSPITALS ENSEMBLE 

Aug., Sep., and Oct., '6j. — I am in the habit of go- 
ing to all, and to Fairfax seminary, Alexandria, and 
over Long bridge to the great Convalescent camp. 
The journals publish a regular directory of them — a 
long list. As a specimen of almost any one of the 
larger of these hospitals, fancy to yourself a space of 
three to twenty acres of ground, on which are group'd 
ten or twelve very large wooden barracks, with, per- 
haps, a dozen or twenty, and sometimes more than 
that number, small buildings, capable altogether of 
accommodating from five hundred to a thousand or 
fifteen hundred persons. Sometimes these wooden 
barracks or wards, each of them perhaps from a hun- 
dred to a hundred and fifty feet long, are rang'd in a 
straight row, evenly fronting the street ; others are 
plann'd so as to form an immense V ; and others again 
are ranged around a hollow square. They make alto- 
gether a huge cluster, with the additional tents, extra 
wards for contagious diseases, guard-houses, sutler^s 
stores, chaplain's house ; in the middle will probably 
be an edifice devoted to the offices of the surgeon in 
charge and the ward surgeons, principal attaches, 
clerks, &c. The wards are either letter'd alphabeti- 
cally, ward G, ward K, or else numerically, i, 2, 3, &c. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA /I 

Each has its ward surgeon and corps of nurses. Of 
course, there is, in the aggregate, quite a muster of 
employes, and over all the surgeon in charge. Here in 
Washington, when these army hospitals are all fill'd, 
(as they have been already several times,) they contain 
a population more numerous in itself than the whole 
of the Washington of ten or fifteen years ago. Within 
sight of the capitol, as I write, are some thirty or forty 
such collections, at times holding from fifty to seventy 
thousand men. Looking from any eminence and study- 
ing the topography in my rambles, I use them as land- 
marks. Through the rich August verdure of the trees, 
see that white group of buildings off yonder in the out- 
skirts ; then another cluster half a mile to the left of 
the first ; then another a mile to the right, and another 
a mile beyond, and still another between us and the 
first. Indeed, we can hardly look in any direction but 
these clusters are dotting the landscape and environs. 
That little town, as you might suppose it, ofl there on 
the brow of the hill, is indeed a town, but of wounds, 
sickness, and death. It is Finley hospital, northeast 
of the city, on Kendall green, as it used to be call'd. 
That other is Campbell hospital. Both are large estab- 
lishments. I have known these two alone to have from 
two thousand to twenty-five hundred inmates. Then 
there is Carver hospital, larger still, a wall'd and mili- 
tary city regularly laid out, and guarded by squads of 
sentries. Again, off east, Lincoln hospital, a still 
larger one ; and half a mile further Emory hospital. 
Still sweeping the eye around down the river toward 
Alexandria, we see, to the right, the locality where the 
Convalescent camp stands, with its five, eight, or some- 



72 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

times ten thousand inmates. Even all these are but a 
portion. The Harewood, Mount Pleasant, Armory- 
square, Judiciary hospitals, are some of the rest, and 
all large collections. 

SPIRITUAL CHARACTERS AMONG THE SOLDIERS 

Every now and then, in hospital or camp, there are 
beings I meet — specimens of unworldliness, disinterest- 
edness, and animal purity and heroism — perhaps some 
unconscious Indianian, or from Ohio or Tennessee — 
on whose birth the calmness of heaven seems to have 
descended, and whose gradual growing up, whatever 
the circumstances of work-life or change, or hardship, 
or small or no education that attended it, the power of 
a strange spiritual sweetness, fibre and inward health, 
has also attended. Something veil'd and abstracted 
is often a part of the manners of these beings. I have 
met them, I say, not seldom in the army, in camp, and 
in the hospitals. The Western regiments contain 
many of them. They are often young men, obeying 
the events and occasions about them, marching, sol- 
diering, fighting, foraging, cooking, working on farms 
or at some trade before the war — unaware of their own 
nature, (as to that, who is aware of his own nature?) 
their companions only understanding that they are dif- 
ferent from the rest, more silent, ''something odd 
about them," and apt to go off and meditate and muse 

in solitude. 

DOWN AT THE FRONT 

CuLPEPER, Va., Feb. '64.— Here I am pretty well 
down toward the extreme front. Three or four days 
ago General S., who is now in chief command, (I be- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 73 

lieve Meade is absent, sick,) moved a strong force 
southward from camp as if intending business. They 
went to the Rapidan ; there has since been some 
manoeuvring and a little fighting, but nothing of con- 
sequence. The telegraphic accounts given Monday 
morning last, make entirely too much of it, I should 
say. What General S. intended we here know not, 
but we trust in that competent commander. We were 
somewhat excited, (but not so very much either,) on 
Sunday, during the day and night, as orders were sent 
out to pack up and harness, and be ready to evacuate, 
to fall back towards Washington. But I was very 
sleepy and went to bed. Some tremendous shouts 
arousing me during the night, I went forth and found 
it was from the men above mention'd, who were re- 
turning. I talk'd with some of the men; as usual T 
found them full of gayety, endurance, and many fine lit- 
tle outshows, the signs of the most excellent good man- 
liness of the world. It was a curious sight to see those 
shadowy columns moving through the night. 1 stood 
unobserv'd in the darkness and watch'd them long. 
The mud was very deep. The men had their usual 
burdens, overcoats, knapsacks, guns and blankets. 
Along and along they filed by me, with often a laugh, 
a song, a cheerful word, but never once a murmur. It 
may have been odd, but I never before so realized the 
majesty and reality of the American people en masse. 
It fell upon me like a great awe. The strong ranks 
moved neither fast nor slow. They had march'd seven 
or eight miles already through the slipping unctuous 
mud. The brave First corps stopt here. The equally 
brave Third corps moved on to Brandy station. The 



74 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

famous Brooklyn 14th are here, guarding the town. 
You see their red legs actively moving everywhere. 
Then they have a theatre of their own here. They 
give musical performances, nearly everything done capi- 
tally. Of course the audience is a jam. It is good 
sport to attend one of these entertainments of the 14th. 
I like to look around at the soldiers, and the general 
collection in front of the curtain, more than the scene 
on the stage. 

PAYING THE BOUNTIES 

One of the things to note here now is the arrival of 
the paymaster with his strong box, and the payment of 
bounties to veterans re-enlisting. Major H. is here to- 
day, with a small mountain of greenbacks, rejoicing 
the hearts of the 2d division of the First corps. In the 
midst of a rickety shanty, behind a little table, sit the 
major and clerk Eldridge, with the rolls before them, 
and much moneys. A re-enlisted man gets in cash 
about $200 down, (and heavy instalments following, as 
the pay-days arrive, one after another.) The show of the 
men crowding around is quite exhilarating; I like to 
stand and look. They feel elated, their pockets full, 
and the ensuing furlough, the visit home. It is a scene 
of sparkling eyes and flush'd cheeks. The soldier has 
many gloomy and harsh experiences, and this makes 
up for some of them. Major H. is order'd to pay first 
all the re-enlisted men of the First corps their bounties 
and back pay, and then the rest. You hear the pecul- 
iar sound of the rustling of the new and crisp green- 
backs by the hour, through the nimble fingers of the 
major e.nd my friend clerk E. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 75 



SUMMER OF 1864 



I am back again in Washington, on my regular daily 
and nightly rounds. Of course there are many special- 
ties. Dotting a ward here and there are always cases 
of poor fellows, long-suffering under obstinate wounds, 
or weak and dishearten'd from typhoid fever, or the 
like; mark'd cases, needing special and sympathetic 
nourishment. These I sit down and either talk to, or 
silently cheer them up. They always like it hugely, 
(and so do I.) Each case has its peculiarities, and 
needs some new adaptation. I have learnt to thus 
conform — learnt a good deal of hospital wisdom. 
Some of the poor young chaps, away from home for 
the first time in their lives, hunger and thirst for affec- 
tion; this is sometimes the only thing that will reach 
their condition. The men like to have a pencil, and 
something to write in. 1 have given them cheap pock- 
et-diaries, and almanacs for 1864, interleav'd with 
blank paper. For reading I generally have some old 
pictorial magazines or story papers — they are always 
acceptable. Also the morning or evening papers of 
the day. The best books I do not give, but lend to 
read through the wards, and then take them to others, 
and so on; they are very punctual about returning the 
books. In these wards, or on the field, as I thus con- 
tinue to go round, I have come to adapt myself to each 
emergency, after its kind or call, however trivial, how- 
ever solemn, every one justified and made real under 
its circumstances — not only visits and cheering talk 
and little gifts — not only washing and dressing wounds, 
(I have some cases where the patient is unwilling any 



76 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

one shall do this but me) — but passages from the Bible, 
expounding them, prayer at the bedside, explanations 
of doctrine, &c. (I think I see my friends smiling at 
this confession, but I was never more in earnest in my 
life.) In camp and everywhere, I was in the habit of 
reading or giving recitations to the men. They were 
very fond of it, and liked declamatory poetical pieces. 
We would gather in a large group by ourselves, after 
supper, and spend the time in such readings, or in 
talking, and occasionally by an amusing game called 
the game of twenty questions. 

DEATH OF A HERO 

I wonder if I could ever convey to another — to you, 
for instance, reader dear — the tender and terrible real- 
ities of such cases, (many, many happen'd,) as the one 
I am now going to mention. Stewart C. Glover, com- 
pany E, 5th Wisconsin — was wounded May 5, in one 
of those fierce tussles of the Wilderness — died May 21 
— aged about 20. He was a small and beardless young 
man — a splendid soldier — in fact almost an ideal Amer- 
ican, of his age. He had serv'd nearly three years, and 
would have been entitled to his discharge in a few 
days. He was in Hancock's corps. The fighting had 
about ceas'd for the day, and the general commanding 
the brigade rode by and call'd for volunteers to bring 
in the wounded. Glover responded among the first — 
went out gayly — but while in the act of bearing in a 
wounded sergeant to our lines, was shot in the knee 
by a rebel sharpshooter; consequence, amputation and 
death. He had resided with his father, John Glover, 
an aged and feeble man, in Batavia, Genesee county. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA T^ 

N. Y., but was at school in Wisconsin, after the war 
broke out, and there enhsted — soon took to soldier- 
Hfe, liked it, was very manly, was belov'd by officers 
and comrades. He kept a little diary, like so many of 
the soldiers. On the day of his death he wrote the 
following in it, to-day the doctor says I must die — all is 
over with me — ah, so you7tg to die. On another blank 
leaf he pencill'd to his brother, dear brother Tho77tas, I 
have been brave but wicked — pray for me. 

HOSPITAL SCENES— INCIDENTS 

It is Sunday afternoon, middle of summer, hot and 
oppressive, and very silent through the ward. I am 
taking care of a critical case, now lying in a half leth- 
argy. Near where I sit is a suflering rebel, from the 
8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here 
a long time, badly wounded, and lately had his leg am- 
putated; it is not doing very well. Right opposite me 
is a sick soldier-boy, laid down with his clothes on, 
sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his 
arm. I see by the yellow trimming on his jacket that 
he is a cavalry boy. 1 step softly over and find by his 
card that he is named William Cone, of the ist Maine 
cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan. 

Ice Cream Treat. — One hot day toward the middle 
of June, I gave the inmates of Carver hospital a gen- 
eral ice cream treat, purchasing a large quantity, and, 
under convoy of the doctor or head nurse, going 
around personally through the wards to see to its dis- 
tribution. 

An Incident. — In one of the fights before Atlanta, a 
rebel soldier, of large size, evidently a young man, was 



78 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

mortally wounded top of the head, so that the brains 
partially exuded. He lived three days, lying on his 
back on the spot where he first dropt. He dug with 
his heel in the ground during that time a hole big- 
enough to put in a couple of ordinary knapsacks. He 
just lay there in the open air, and with little intermis- 
sion kept his heel going night and day. Some of our 
soldiers then moved him to a house, but he died in a 
few minutes. 

A7iother. — After the battles at Columbia, Tennessee, 
where we repuls'd about a score of vehement rebel 
charges, they left a great many wounded on the 
ground, mostly within our range. Whenever any of 
these wounded attempted to move away by any means, 
generally by crawling off, our men without exception 
brought them down by a bullet. They let none crawl 
away, no matter what his condition. 

DESERTERS 

Oct. 24. — Saw a large squad of our own deserters, 
(over 300) surrounded with a cordon of arm'd guards, 
marching along Pennsylvania avenue. The most mot- 
ley collection I ever saw, all sorts of rig, all sorts of 
hats and caps, many fine-looking young fellows, some 
of them shame-faced, some sickly, most of them dirty, 
shirts very dirty and long worn, &c. They tramp'd 
along without order, a huge huddling mass, not in 
ranks. I saw some of the spectators laughing, but I 
felt like anything else but laughing. These deserters 
are far more numerous than would be thought. Al- 
most every day I see squads of them, sometimes two 
or three at a time, with a small guard; sometimes ten 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 79 

or twelve, under a larger one. (I hear that desertions 
from the army now in the field have often averaged 
10,000 a month. One of the commonest sights in 
Washington is a squad of deserters.) 

GIFTS— MONEY— DISCRIMINATION 

As a very large proportion of the wounded came up 
from the front without a cent of money in their pockets, 
I soon discovered that it was about the best thing 1 
could do to raise their spirits, and show them that 
somebody cared for them, and practically felt a fatherly 
or brotherly interest in them, to give them small sums 
in such cases, using tact and discretion about it. I am 
regularly supplied with funds for this purpose by good 
women and men in Boston, Salem, Providence, Brook- 
lyn, and New York. I provide myself with a quantity 
of bright new ten-cent and five-cent bills, and, when I 
think it incumbent, I give 25 or 30 cents, or perhaps 
50 cents, and occasionally a still larger sum to some 
particular case. As I have started this subject, I take 
opportunity to ventilate the financial question. My 
supplies, altogether voluntary, mostly confidential, 
often seeming quite Providential, were numerous and 
varied. For instance, there were two distant and 
wealthy ladies, sisters, who sent regularly, for two years, 
quite heavy sums, enjoining that their names should 
be kept secret. The same delicacy was indeed a fre- 
quent condition. From several I had carte blanche. 
Many were entire strangers. From these sources, dur- 
ing from two to three years, in the manner described, 
in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, 
many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing 



8o AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

conclusively — that beneath all the ostensible greed and 
heartlessness of our times there is no end to the gener- 
ous benevolence of men and women in the United 
States, when once sure of their object. Another thing 
became clear to me — while cash is not amiss to bring 
up the rear, tact and magnetic sym.pathy and unction 
are, and ever will be, sovereign still. 

ITEMS FROM MY NOTE BOOKS 
Some of the half-eras'd, and not over-legible when 
made, memoranda of things wanted by one patient or 
another, will convey quite a fair idea. D. S. G., bed 
52, wants a good book; has a sore, weak throat; would 
like some horehound candy; is from New Jersey, 28th 
regiment. C. H. L., 145th Pennsylvania, lies in bed 
6, with jaundice and erysipelas; also wounded; stom- 
ach easily nauseated; bring him some oranges, also a 
little tart jelly; hearty, full-blooded young fellow — (he 
got better in a few days, and is now home on a fur- 
lough.) J. H. G., bed 24, wants an undershirt, drawers, 
and socks; has not had a change for quite a while; is 
evidently a neat, clean boy from New England — (I sup- 
plied him; also with a comb, tooth-brush, and some 
soap and towels; I noticed afterward he was the clean- 
est of the whole ward.) Mrs. G., lady-nurse, ward F, 
wants a bottle of brandy — has two patients imperatively 
requiring stimulus — low with wounds and exhaustion. 
(I supplied her with a bottle of first-rate brandy from 
the Christian commission rooms.) 

ARMY SURGEONS— AID DEFICIENCIES 
I must bear my most emphatic testimony to the zeal, 
manliness, and professional spirit and capacity, gener- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 8l 

ally prevailing among the surgeons, many of them 
young men, in the hospitals and the army. I will not 
say much about the exceptions, for they are few; (but 
I have met some of those few, and very incompetent 
and airish they were.) I never ceas'd to find the best 
men, and the hardest and most disinterested workers, 
among the surgeons in the hospitals. They are full 
of genius, too. I have seen many hundreds of them 
and this is my testimony. There are, however, serious 
deficiencies, wastes, sad want of system, in the com- 
missions, contributions, and in all the voluntary, and 
a great part of the governmental nursing, edibles, 
medicines, stores, &c. (I do not say surgical attend- 
ance, because the surgeons cannot do miore than hu- 
man endurance permits.) Whatever puffing accounts 
there may be in the papers of the North, this is the 
actual fact. No thorough previous preparation, no 
system, no foresight, no genius. Always plenty of 
stores, no doubt, but never where they are needed, 
and never the proper application. Of all harrowing 
experiences, none is greater than that of the days fol- 
lowing a heavy battle. Scores, hundreds of the noblest 
men on earth, uncomplaining, lie helpless, mangled, 
faint, alone, and so bleed to death, or die from ex- 
haustion, either actually untouch'd at all, or merely 
the laying of them down and leaving them, when there 
ought to be means provided to save them. 

BOYS IN THE ARMY 

As I walk'd home about sunset, I saw in Fourteenth 
street a very young soldier, thinly clad, standing near 
the house I was about to enter. I stopt a moment in 



82 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

front of the door and call'd him to me. I knew that 
an old Tennessee regiment, and also an Indiana regi- 
ment, were temporarily stopping in new barracks, near 
Fourteenth street. This boy I found belonged to the 
Tennessee regiment. But I could hardly believe he 
carried a musket. He was but 15 years old, yet had 
been twelve months a soldier, and had borne his part 
in several battles, even historic ones. I ask'd him if he 
did not suffer from the cold, and if he had no overcoat. 
No, he did not suffer from cold, and had no overcoat, 
but could draw one whenever he wish'd. His father 
was dead, and his mother living in some part of East 
Tennessee; all the men were from that part of the 
country. The next forenoon I saw the Tennessee and 
Indiana regiments marching down the Avenue. My 
boy was with the former, stepping along with the rest. 
There were many other boys no older. I stood and 
watch'd them as they tramp'd along with slow, strong, 
heavy, regular steps. There did not appear to be a 
man over 30 years of age, and a large proportion were 
from 15 to perhaps 22 or 23. They had all the look of 
veterans, worn, stain'd, impassive, and a certain unbent, 
lounging gait, carrying in addition to their regular 
arms and knapsacks, frequently a frying-pan, broom, &c. 
They were all of pleasant physiognomy; no refinement, 
nor blanch'd with intellect, but as my eye pick'd them, 
moving along, rank by rank, there did not seem to be 
a single repulsive, brutal or markedly stupid face among 

them. 

FEMALE NURSES FOR SOLDIERS 

There are many women in one position or another, 
among the hospitals, mostly as nurses here in Wash- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 83 

ington, and among the military stations; quite a num- 
ber of them young ladies acting as volunteers. They 
are a help in certain ways, and deserve to be mention'd 
with respect. Then it remains to be distinctly said that 
few or no young ladies, under the irresistible conven- 
tions of society, answer the practical requirements of 
nurses for soldiers. Middle-aged or healthy and good 
condition'd elderly women, mothers of children, are 
always best. Many of the wounded must be handled. 
A hundred things which cannot be gainsay'd, must 
occur and must be done. The presence of a good mid- 
dle-aged or elderly woman, the magnetic touch of 
hands, the expressive features of the mother, the silent 
soothing of her presence, her words, her knowledge 
and privileges arrived at only through having had 
children, are precious and final qualifications. It is a 
natural faculty that is required ; it is not merely having 
a genteel young woman at a table in a ward. One of 
the finest nurses I met was a red-faced illiterate old 
Irish woman; I have seen her take the poor wasted 
naked boys so tenderly up in her arms. There are 
plenty of excellent clean old black women that would 
make tip-top nurses. 

SOUTHERN ESCAPEES 

Feb. 2j, 'dj. — I saw a large procession of young men 
from the rebel army, (deserters they are call'd, but the 
usual meaning of the word does not apply to them,) 
passing the Avenue to-day. There were nearly 200, 
come up yesterday by boat from James river. I stood 
and watch'd them as they shuffled along, in a slow, 
tired, worn sort of way; a large proportion of light- 



84 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

hair'd, blonde, light gray -eyed young men among 
them. Their costumes had a dirt-stain'd uniformity; 
most had been originally gray; some had articles of our 
uniform, pants on one, vest or coat on another; I think 
they were mostly Georgia and North Carolina boys. 
They excited little or no attention. As I stood quite 
close to them, several good looking enough youths, 
(but O what a tale of misery their appearance told,) 
nodded or just spoke to me, without doubt divining 
pity and fatherliness out of my face, for my heart was 
full enough of it. Several of the couples trudg'd along 
with their arms about each other, some probably 
brothers, as if they were afraid they might somehow 
get separated. They nearly all look'd what one might 
call simple, yet intelligent, too. Some had pieces of 
old carpet, some blankets, and others old bags around 
their shoulders. Some of them here and there had fine 
faces, still it was a procession of misery. The two hun- 
dred had with them about half a dozen arm'd guards. 
Along this week I saw some such procession, more or 
less in numbers, every day, as they were brought up by 
the boat. The government does what it can for them, 
and sends them north and west. 

THE CAPITOL BY GAS-LIGHT 

To-night I have been wandering awhile in the capi- 
tol, which is all lit up. The illuminated rotunda looks 
fine. I like to stand aside and look a long, long while, 
up at the dome; it comforts me somehow. The House 
and Senate were both in session till very late. I look'd 
in upon them, but only a few moments; they were hard 
at work on tax appropriation bills. I wander'd through 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 85 

the long and rich corridors and apartments under the 
Senate; an old habit of mine, former winters, and now 
more satisfaction than ever. Not many persons down 
there, occasionally a flitting figure in the distance. 

THE INAUGURATION 

March 4. — The President very quietly rode down to 
the capitol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp 
trot, about noon, either because he wish'd to be on 
hand to sign bills, or to get rid of marching in line 
with the absurd procession, the muslin temple of liber- 
ty, and pasteboard monitor. I saw him on his return, 
at 3 o'clock, after the performance was over. He 
was in his plain two-horse barouche, and look'd very 
much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast respon- 
sibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life and 
death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; 
yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and can- 
ny shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see 
that man without feeling that he is one to become 
personally attach'd to, for his combination of purest, 
heartiest tenderness, and native western form of man- 
liness.) By his side sat his little boy, of ten years. 
There were no soldiers, only a lot of civilians on horse- 
back, with huge yellow scarfs over their shoulders, 
riding around the carriage. (At the inauguration four 
years ago, he rode down and back again surrounded 
by a dense mass of arm'd cavalry-men eight deep, with 
drawn sabres; and there were sharp-shooters station'd 
at every corner on the route.) I ought to make men- 
tion of the closing levee of Saturday night last. Never 
before was such a compact jam in front of the White 



86 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

House — all the grounds fill'd, and away out to the 
spacious sidewalks. I was there, as I took a notion to 
go — was in the rush inside with the crowd — surged 
along the passage-ways, the blue and other rooms, 
and through the great east room. Crowds of country 
people, some very funny. Fijie music from the Marine 
band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all 
in black, with white kid gloves and a claw-hammer 
coat, receiving, as in duty bound, shaking hands, 
looking very disconsolate, and as if he would give any- 
thing to be som.ewhere else. 

INAUGURATION BALL 

March 6. — I have been up to look at the dance and 
supper-rooms, for the inauguration ball at the Patent 
office; and I could not help thinking, what a different 
scene they presented to my view a while since, fill'd 
with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war, 
brought in from second Bull Run, Antietam, and 
Fredericksburg. To-night, beautiful women, perfumes, 
the violins' sweetness, the polka and the waltz; then 
the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy 
eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of wounds 
and blood, and many a mother's son amid strangers, 
passing away untended there, (for the crowd of the 
badly hurt was great, and much for nurse to do, and 
much for surgeon.) 

A YANKEE ANTIQUE 

March ^7, 186^. — Sergeant Calvin F. Harlowe, com- 
pany C, 29th Massachusetts, 3d brigade, ist division. 
Ninth corps — a mark'd sample of heroism and death. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 8/ 

(some may say bravado, but I say heroism, of grandest, 
oldest order) — in the late attack by the rebel troops, 
and temporary capture by them, of Fort Stedman, at 
night. The fort was surprised at dead of night. Sud- 
denly awaken'd from their sleep, and rushing from 
their tents, Harlowe, with others, found himself in the 
hands of the secesh — they demanded his surrender — 
he answer'd. Never while I live. (Of course it was use- 
less. The others surrender 'd; the odds were too great.) 
Again he was ask'd to yield, this time by a rebel cap- 
tain. Though surrounded, and quite calm, he again 
refused, call'd sternly to his comrades to fight on, and 
himself attempted to do so. The rebel captain then 
shot him — but at the same instant he shot the captain. 
Both fell together mortally wounded. Harlowe died 
almost instantly. The rebels were driven out in a very 
short time. The body was buried next day, but soon 
taken up and sent home, (Plymouth county, Mass.) 
Harlowe was only 22 years of age — was a tall, slim,, 
dark-hair'd, blue-eyed young man — had come out orig- 
inally with the 29th; and that is the way he met his 
death, after four years' campaign. He was in the 
Seven Days fight before Richmond, in second Bull 
Run, Antietam, first Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Jack- 
son, Wilderness, and the campaigns following — was 
as good a soldier as ever wore the blue, and every 
old officer in the regiment will bear that testimony. 
Though so young, and in a common rank, he had a 
spirit as resolute and brave as any hero in the books, 
ancient or modem — It was too great to say the words 
"I surrender" — and so he died. (When I think of 
such things, knowing them well, all the vast and com- 



88 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

plicated events of the war, on which history dwells and 
makes its volumes, fall aside, and for the moment at 
any rate I see nothing but young Calvin Harlowe's fig- 
ure in the night, disdaining to surrender.) 

WOUNDS AND DISEASES 

The war is over, but the hospitals are fuller than 
ever, from former and current cases. A large majority 
of the wounds are in the arms and legs. But there is 
every kind of wound, in every part of the body. I 
should say of the sick, from my observation, that the 
prevailing maladies are typhoid fever and the camp 
fevers generally, diarrhoea, catarrhal affections and 
bronchitis, rheumatism and pneumonia. These forms 
of sickness lead ; all the rest follow. There are twice 
as many sick as there are wounded. The deaths range 
from seven to ten per cent, of those under treatment.* 

DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

April i6, 'dj. — I find in my notes of the time, this 
passage on the death of Abraham Lincoln: He leaves 
for America s history and biography, so far, not only 
its most dramatic reminiscence — he leaves, in my 
opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, 
moral personality. Not but that he had faults, and 
show'd them in the Presidency; but honesty, goodness, 
shrewdness, conscience, and (a new virtue, unknown 

* In the U. S. Surgeon-General's office since, there is a formal record and 
treatment of 253,142 cases of wounds by government surgeons. What must 
have been the number unofficial, indirect — to say nothing of the Southern 
armies ? 



% 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 89 

to other lands, and hardly yet really known here, but 
the foundation and tie of all, as the future will grandly 
develop,) Unionism, in its truest and amplest sense, 
form'd the hard-pan of his character. These he seal'd 
with his life. The tragic splendor of his death, purg- 
ing, illuminating all, throws round his form, his head, 
an aureole that will remain and will grow brighter 
through time, while history lives, and love of country 
lasts. By many has this Union been help'd; but if one 
name, one man, must be pick'd out, he, most of all, is 
the conservator of it, to the future. He was assassin- 
ated — but the Union is not assassinated — ga ira I One 
falls, and another falls. The soldier drops, sinks like 
a wave — but the ranks of the ocean eternally press on. 
Death does its work, obliterates a hundred, a thousand 
— President, general, captain, private — but the Nation 
is immortal. 

SHERMAN'S ARMY'S JUBILATION— ITS SUDDEN 
STOPPAGE 

When Sherman's armies, (long after they left At- 
lanta,) were marching through South and North Caro- 
lina — after leaving Savannah, the news of Lee's capitu- 
lation having been receiv'd — the men never mov'd a 
mile without from some part of the line sending up 
continued, inspiriting shouts. At intervals all day 
long sounded out the wild music of those peculiar 
army cries. They would be commenc'd by one regi- 
ment or brigade, immediately taken up by others, and 
at length whole corps and armies would join in these 
wild triumphant choruses. It was one of the char- 
acteristic expressions of the western troops, and became 



90 AUTOBTOGRAPHIA 

a habit, serving as a relief and outlet to the men— a 
vent for their feelings of victory, returning peace, &c. 
Morning, noon, and afternoon, spontaneous, for occa- 
sion or without occasion, these huge, strange cries, 
differing from any other, echoing through the open air 
for many a mile, expressing youth, joy, wildness, irre- 
pressible strength, and the ideas of advance and con- 
quest, sounded along the swamps and uplands of the 
South, floating to the skies. (** There never were men 
that kept in better spirits in danger or defeat — what 
then could they do in victory ? " — said one of the 15th 
corps to me, afterwards.) This exuberance continued 
till the armies arrived at Raleigh. There the news of 
the President's murder was received. Then no more 
shouts or yells, for a week. All the marching was 
comparatively muffled. It was very significant — hardly 
a loud word or laugh in many of the regiments. A 
hush and silence pervaded all. 

NO GOOD PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN' 

Probably the reader has seen physiognomies (often 
old farmers, sea-captains, and such) that, behind their 
homeliness, or even ugliness, held superior points so 
subtle, yet so palpable, making the real life of their 
faces almost as impossible to depict as a wild perfume 
or fruit-taste, or a passionate tone of the living voice — 
and such was Lincoln's face, the peculiar color, the 
lines of it, the eyes, mouth, expression. Of technical 
beauty it had nothing — but to the eye of a great artist 
it furnished a rare study, a feast and fascination. The 
current portraits are all failures — most of them carica- 
tures. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 9I 

RELEAS'D UNION PRISONERS FROM SOUTH 

The releas'd prisoners of war are now coming up 
from the southern prisons. I have seen a number of 
them. The sight is worse than any sight of battle- 
fields, or any collection of wounded, even the bloodiest. 
There was, (as a sample,) one large boat load, of sev- 
eral hundreds, brought about the 25th, to Annapolis; 
and out of the whole number only three individuals 
were able to walk from the boat. The rest were carried 
ashore and laid down in one place or another. Can 
those be men — those little livid brown, ash-streak'd, 
monkey-looking dwarfs ? — are they really not mum- 
mied, dwindled corpses ? They lay there, most of 
them, quite still, but with a horrible look in their eyes 
and skinny lips (often with not enough flesh on the 
lips to cover their teeth.) Probably no more appalling 
sight was ever seen on this earth. (There are deeds, 
crimes, that may be forgiven; but this is not among 
them. It steeps its perpetrators in blackest, escape- 
less, endless damnation. Over 50,000 have been com- 
pell'd to die the death of starvation — reader, did you 
ever try to realize what starvation actually is ? — in 
those prisons — and in a land of plenty.) An indescrib- 
able meanness, tyranny, aggravating course of insults, 
almost incredible — was evidently the rule of treatment 
through all the southern military prisons. The dead 
there, are not to be pitied as much as some of the liv- 
ing that come from there — if they can be call'd living 
— many of them are mentally imbecile, and will never 
recuperate. 



92 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

THE ARMIES RETURNING 

May 7. — Sunday. — To-day as I was walking a mile 
or two south of Alexandria, I fell in with several large 
squads of the returning Western army, {Sherman s inen 
as they call'd themselves) about a thousand in all, the 
largest portion of them half sick, some convalescents, 
on their way to a hospital camp. These fragmentary 
excerpts, with the unmistakable Western physiognomy 
and idioms, crawling along slowl}^ — after a great cam- 
paign, blown this way, as it were, out of their latitude 
— I mark'd with curiosity, and talk'd with off and on 
for over an hour. Here and there was one very sick; 
but all were able to walk, except some of the last, who 
had given out, and were seated on the ground, faint 
and despondent. These I tried to cheer, told them the 
camp they were to reach was only a little way further 
over the hill, and so got them up and started, accompa- 
nying some of the worst a little way, and helping them, 
or putting them under the support of stronger com- 
rades. 

May 21. — Saw General Sheridan and his cavalry to- 
day; a strong, attractive sight; the men were mostly 
young, (a few middle-aged,) superb-looking fellows, 
brown, spare, keen, with well-worn clothing, many 
with pieces of water-proof cloth around their shoulders, 
hanging down. They dash'd along pretty fast, in wide 
close ranks, all spatter'd with mud; no holiday soldiers; 
brigade after brigade. I could have watch'd for a 
week. Sheridan stood on a balcony, under a big tree, 
coolly smoking a cigar. His looks and manner im- 
press'd me favorably. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 93 

May 22. — Have been taking a walk along Pennsyl- 
vania avenue and Seventh street north. The city is 
full of soldiers, running around loose. Officers every- 
where, of all grades. All have the weather-beaten look 
of practical service. It is a sight I never tire of. All 
the armies are now here (or portions of them,) for to- 
morrow's review. You see them swarming like bees 
everywhere. 

THE GRAND REVIEW 

For two days now the broad spaces of Pennsylvania 
avenue along to Treasury hill, and so by detour around 
to the President's house, and so up to Georgetown, and 
across the aqueduct bridge, have been alive with a mag- 
nificent sight, the returning armies. In their wide 
ranks stretching clear across the Avenue, I watch them 
march or ride along, at a brisk pace, through two 
whole days — infantry, cavalry, artillery — some 200,000 
men. Some days afterwards one or two other corps; 
and then, still afterwards, a good part of Sherman's 
immense army, brought up from Charleston, Savan- 
nah, &c. 

TWO BROTHERS, ONE SOUTH, ONE NORTH 

May 28-g, — I staid to-night a long time by the bed- 
side of a new patient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 
19 years, W. S. P., (2d Maryland, southern,) very fee- 
ble, right leg amputated, can't sleep hardly at all — has 
taken a great deal of morphine, which, as usual, is 
costing more than it comes to. Evidently very intelli- 
gent and well bred — very affectionate — held on to my 
hand, and put it by his face, not willing to let me 
leave. As I was lingering, soothing him in his pain, he 



94 AUTOBTOGRAPHIA 

says to me suddenly, ** I hardly think you know who 
I am — I don't wish to impose upon you — I am a rebel 
soldier." I said I did not know that, but it made no 
difference. Visiting him daily for about two weeks 
after that, while he lived, (death had mark'd him, and 
he was quite alone,) I loved him much, always kiss'd 
him, and he did me. In an adjoining ward I found his 
brother, an officer of rank, a Union soldier, a brave 
and religious man, (Col. Clifton K. Prentiss, Sixth 
Maryland infantry. Sixth corps, wounded in one of the 
engagements at Petersburg, April 2 — linger 'd, suffer'd 
much, died in Brooklyn, Aug. 20, '65.) It was in the 
same battle both were hit. One was a strong Union- 
ist, the other Secesh; both fought on their respective 
sides, both badly wounded, and both brought together 
here after a separation of four years. Each died for 
his cause. 

CALHOUN'S REAL MONUMENT 

In one of the hospital tents for special cases, as I sat 
to-day tending a new amputation, I heard a couple of 
neighboring soldiers talking to each other from their 
cots. One down with fever, but improving, had come 
up belated from Charleston not long before. The oth- 
er is what we now call an "old veteran," (/. e., he was 
a Connecticut youth, of probably less than the age of 
twenty-five years, the four last of which he had spent 
in active service in the war in all parts of the country.) 
The two were chatting of one thing and another. The 
fever soldier spoke of John C. Calhoun's monument, 
which he had seen, and was describing it. The veter- 
an said: "I have seen Calhoun's monument. That 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 95 

you saw is not the real monument. But I have seen 
it. It is the desolated, ruined south; nearly the whole 
generation of young men between seventeen and thirty 
destroyed or maim'd; all the old families used up — the 
rich impoverish'd, the plantations cover'd with weeds, 
the slaves unloos'd and become the masters, and the 
name of southerner blacken'd with every shame — all 
that is Calhoun's real monument." 

HOSPITALS CLOSING 

October J. — There are two army hospitals now re- 
maining. I went to the largest of these (Douglas) and 
spent the afternoon and evening. There are many 
sad cases, old wounds, incurable sickness, and some 
of the wounded from the March and April battles be- 
fore Richmond. Few realize how sharp and bloody 
those closing battles were. Our men exposed them- 
selves more than usual; press'd ahead without urging. 
Then the southerners fought with extra desperation. 
Both sides knew that with the successful chasing of 
the rebel cabal from Richmond, and the occupation of 
that city by the national troops, the game was up. 
The dead and wounded were unusually many. Of the 
wounded the last lingering driblets have been brought 
to hospital here. I find many rebel wounded here, 
and have been extra busy to-day 'tending to the worst 
cases of tluim with the rest. 

Oct.y Nov. and Dec, 'dj — Simdays. — Every Sunday 
of these months visited Harewood hospital out in the 
woods, pleasant and recluse, some two and a half or 
three miles north of tlic capitol. The situation is 
healthy, with broken ground, grassy slopes and patch- 



96 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

es of oak woods, the trees large and fine. It was one 
of the most extensive of the hospitals, now reduced to 
four or five partially occupied wards, the numerous 
others being vacant. In November, this became the 
last military hospital kept up by the government, all 
the others being closed. Cases of the worst and most 
incurable wounds, obstinate illness, and of poor fellows 
who have no homes to go to, are found here. 

The roads. — A great recreation, the past three years, 
has been in taking long walks out from Washington, 
five, seven, perhaps ten miles and back ; generally with 
my friend Peter Doyle, who is as fond of it as I am. 
Fine moonlight nights, over the perfect military roads, 
hard and smooth — or Sundays — we had these delight- 
ful walks, never to be forgotten. The roads connect- 
ing Washington and the numerous forts around the 
city, made one useful result, at any rate, out of the 
war. 

TYPICAL SOLDIERS 

Even the typical soldiers I have been personally in- 
timate with, — it seems to me if I were to make a list 
of them it would be like a city directory. Some few 
only have I mention'd in the foregoing pages — most 
are dead — a few yet living. There is Reuben Farwell. 
of Michigan, (little ' Mitch ; ') Benton H. Wilson, color- 
bearer, 185th New York ; Wm. Stansberry ; Manvill 
Winterstein, Ohio ; Bethuel Smith ; Capt. Simms, of 
51st New York, (kill'd at Petersburg mine explosion,) 
Capt. Sam. Pooley and Lieut. Fred. McReady, same 
reg't. Also, same reg't., my brother, George W. Whit- 
man — in active service all through, four years, re- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 97 

enlisting twice — was promoted, step by step, (several 
times immediately after battles,) lieutenant, captain, 
major and lieut. colonel — was in the actions at Roan- 
oke, Newbern, 2d Bull Run, Chantilly, South Mount- 
ain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Jackson, 
the bloody conflicts of the Wilderness, and at Spot- 
sylvania, Cold Harbor, and afterwards around Peters- 
burg ; at one of these latter was taken prisoner, and 
pass'd four or five months in secesh military prisons, 
narrowly escaping with life, from a severe fever, from 
starvation and half-nakedness in the winter. (What a 
history that 51st New York had ! Went out early — 
march'd, fought everywhere — was in storms at sea, 
nearly wreck'd — storm'd forts — tramp'd hither and yon 
in Virginia, night and day, summer of '62 — afterwards 
Kentucky and Mississippi — re-enlisted — was in all the 
engagements and campaigns, as above.) 1 strengthen 
and comfort myself much with the certainty that the 
capacity for just such regiments, (hundreds, thousands 
of them) is inexhaustible in the United States, and that 
there isn't a county nor a township in the republic — 
nor a street in any city — but could turn out, and, on 
occasion, would turn out, lots of just such typical sol- 
diers, whenever wanted. 

''CONVULSIVENESS" 

As I have look'd over the proof-sheets of the pre- 
ceding pages, I have once or twice fear'd that my diary 
would prove, at best, but a batch of convulsively writ- 
ten reminiscences. Well, be it so. They are but parts 
of the actual distraction, heat, smoke and excitement 
of those times. The war itself, with the temper of so- 



98 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

ciety preceding it, can indeed be best described by that 
very word convulsiveness. 

THREE YEARS SUMM'D UP 

During those three years in hospital, camp or field, 
I made over six hundred visits or tours, and went, as I 
estimate, counting all, among from eighty thousand to a 
hundred thousand of the wounded and sick, as sustainer 
of spirit and body in some degree, in time of need. 
These visits varied from an hour or two, to all day or 
night ; for with dear or critical cases I generally watch'd 
all night. Sometimes I took up my quarters in the 
hospital, and slept or watch'd there several nights in 
succession, Those three years I consider the greatest 
privilege and satisfaction, (with all their feverish ex- 
citements and physical deprivations and lamentable 
sights,) and, of course, the most profound lesson of 
my life. I can say that in my ministerings I compre- 
hended all, whoever came in my way, northern or 
southern, and slighted none. It arous'd and brought 
out and decided undream'd-of depths of emotion. It 
has given me my most fervent views of the true ensemble 
and extent of the States. While I was with wounded 
and sick in thousands of cases from the New England 
States, and from New York, New Jersey, and Penn- 
sylvania, and from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indi- 
ana, Illinois, and all the Western States, I was with 
more or less from all the States, North and South, 
without exception. I was with many from the border 
States, especially from Maryland and Virginia, and 
found, during those lurid years 1862-63, far more Un- 
ion southerners, especially Tennesseeans, than is sup- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 99 

posed. I was with many rebel officers and men among 
our wounded, and gave them always what I had, and 
tried to cheer them the same as any. I was among the 
army teamsters considerably, and, indeed, always found 
myself drawn to them. Among the black soldiers, 
wounded or sick, and in the contraband camps, I also 
took my way whenever in their neighborhood, and did 
what I could for them. 

THE MILLION DEAD, TOO, SUMM'D UP 

The dead in this war — there they lie, strewing the 
fields and woods and valleys and battle-fields of the 
south — Virginia, the Peninsula — Malvern hill and Fair 
Oaks — the banks of the Chickahominy — the terraces 
of Fredericksburg — Antietam bridge — the grisly ra- 
vines of Manassas — the bloody promenade of the Wil- 
derness — the varieties of th^ sir ay ed desid, (the estimate 
of the War department is 25,000 national soldiers kill'd 
in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown'd — 15,000 
inhumed by strangers, or on the march in haste, in 
hitherto unfound localities — 2,000 graves cover'd by 
sand and mud by Mississippi freshets, 3,000 carried 
away by caving-in of banks, &c.,) — Gettysburg, the 
West, Southwest — Vicksburg — Chattanooga — the 
trenches of Petersburg — the numberless battles, 
camps, hospitals everywhere — the crop reap'd by the 
the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflammations 
— and blackest and loathsomest of all, tlie dead and 
living burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville, 
Salisbury, Belle Isle, &c., (not Dante's pictured hell 
and all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments, ex- 
cell'd those prisons) — the dead, the dead, the dead — 



100 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

oicr dead — or South or North, ours all, (all, all, all, fi- 
nally dear to me) — or East or West — Atlantic coast or 
Mississippi valley — somewhere they crawl'd to die, 
alone, in bushes, low gullies, or on the sides of hills — 
(there, in secluded spots, their skeletons, bleach'd 
bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing, are 
occasionally found yet) — our young men once so hand- 
some and so joyous, taken from us — the son from the 
mother, the husband from the wife, the dear friend 
from the dear friend — the clusters of camp graves, in 
Georgia, the Carolinas, and in Tennessee — the single 
graves left in the woods or by the road-side, (hundreds, 
thousands, obliterated) — the corpses floated down the 
rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores, floated 
down the upper Potomac, after the cavalry engage- 
ments, the pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburg) — 
some lie at the bottom of the sea — the general million, 
and the special cemeteries in almost all the States — the 
infinite dead — (the land entire saturated, perfumed with 
their impalpable ashes' exhalation in Nature's chemis- 
try distill'd, and shall be so forever, in every future 
grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that 
grows, and every breath we draw) — not only Northern 
dead leavening Southern soil — thousands, aye tens of 
thousands, of Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern 
earth. 

And everywhere among these countless graves — ev- 
erywhere in the many soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, 
(there are now, I believe, over seventy of them) — as at 
the time in the vast trenches, the depositories of slain. 
Northern and Southern, after the great battles — not 
only where the scathing trail passed those years, but 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA lOI 

radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land — 
we see, and ages yet may see, on monuments and 
gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens 
of thousands, the significant word Unknown. 

(In some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are 
unknown. At Salisbury, N. C, for instance, the known 
are only 85, while the unknown are 12,027, and 11,700 
of these are buried in trenches. A national monument 
has been put up here, by order of Congress, to mark 
the spot — but what visible, material monument can 
ever fittingly commemorate that spot 7) 

THE REAL WAR WILL NEVER GET IN THE BOOKS 

And so good-bye to the war. I know not how it may 
have been, or may be, to others — to me the main inter- 
est I found, (and still, on recollection, find,) in the rank 
and file of the armies, both sides, and in those speci- 
mens amid the hospitals, and even the dead on the 
field. To me the points illustrating the latent person- 
al character and eligibilities of these States, in the two 
or three millions of American young and middle-aged 
men. North and South, embodied in those armies — 
and especially the one-third or one-fourth of their 
number, stricken by wounds or disease at some time 
in the course of the contest — were of more signifi- 
cance even than the political interests involved. (As 
so much of a race depends on how it faces death, and 
how it stands personal anguish and sickness. As, in 
the glints of emotions under emergencies, and the in- 
direct traits and asides in Plutarch, we get far pro- 
founder clues to the antique world than all its more 
formal history.) 



I02 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

Future years will never know the seething hell and 
the black infernal background of countless minor 
scenes and interiors, (not the official surface-courteous- 
ness of the Generals, not the few great battles) of the 
Secession war; and it is best they should not-^the real 
war will never get in the books. In the mushy influ- 
ences of current times, too, the fervid atmosphere and 
typical events of those years are in danger of being to- 
tally forgotten. I have at night watch'd by the side of 
a sick man in the hospital, one who could not live 
many hours. I have seen his eyes flash and burn as he 
raised himself and recurr'd to the cruelties on his sur- 
render'd brother, and mutilations of the corpse after- 
ward. 

Such was the war. It was not a quadrille in a ball- 
room. Its interior history will not only never be writ- 
ten — its practicality, minutiae of deeds and passions, 
will never be even suggested. The actual soldier of 
i862-'65. North and South, with all his ways, his in- 
credible dauntlessness, habits, practices, tastes, lan- 
guage, his fierce friendship, his appetite, rankness, his 
superb strength and animality, lawless gait, and a hun- 
dred unnamed lights and shades of camp, I say, will 
never be written — perhaps must not and should not be. 

The preceding notes may furnish a few stray 
glimpses into that life, and into those lurid interiors, 
never to be fully convey'd to the future. The hospital 
part of the drama from '6i to '65, deserves indeed to 
be recorded. Of that many-threaded drama, with its 
sudden and strange surprises, its confounding of 
prophecies, its moments of despair, the dread of for- 
eign interference, the interminable campaigns, the 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA IO3 

bloody battles, the mighty and cumbrous and green 
armies, the drafts and bounties — the immense money 
expenditure, like a heavy-pouring constant rain — with, 
over the whole land, the last three years of the strug- 
gle, an unending, universal mourning-wail of women, 
parents, orphans — the marrow of the tragedy concen- 
trated in those Army Hospitals — (it seem'd sometimes 
as if the whole interest of the land. North and South, 
was one vast central hospital, and all the rest of the 
affair but flanges) — those forming the untold and un- 
written history of the war — infinitely greater (like 
life's) than the few scraps and distortions that are ever 
told or written. Think how much, and of importance, 
will be — how much, civic and military, has already 
been — buried in the grave, in eternal darkness. 

AN INTERREGNUM PARAGRAPH 

Several years now elapse before I resume my diary. 
I continued at Washington working in the Attorney- 
General's department through '66 and '67, and some 
time afterward. In February '73 I was stricken down 
by paralysis, gave up my desk, and migrated to Cam- 
den, New Jersey, where I lived during '74 and '75, 
quite unwell — but after that began to grow better; 
commenc'd going for weeks at a time, even for months, 
down in the country, to a charmingly recluse and 
rural spot along Timber creek, twelve or thirteen miles 
from where it enters the Delaware river. Domicil'd 
at the farm-house of my friends, the Staffords, near by, 
I lived half the time along this creek and its adjacent 
fields and lanes. And it is to my life here that I, per- 
haps, owe partial recovery (a sort of second wind, or 



104 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

semi-renewal of the lease of life) from the prostration 
of 1874-75. If the notes of that outdoor life could 
only prove as glowing to you, reader dear, as the ex- 
perience itself was to me. Doubtless in the course of 
the following, the fact of invalidism will crop out, (I 
call myself a half - Paralytic these days, and rever- 
ently bless the Lord it is no worse,) between some of 
the lines — but I get my share of fun and healthy hours, 
and shall try to indicate them. (The trick is, I find, 
to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and 
make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the 
skies.) 

NEW THEMES ENTERED UPON 

iSyd, 'yy. — I find the woods in mid-May and early 
June my best places for composition.* Seated on logs 
or stumps there, or resting on rails, nearly all the fol- 
lowing memoranda have been jotted down. Wherever 
I go, indeed, winter or summer, city or country, alone 
at home or traveling, I must take notes — (the ruling 
passion strong in age and disablement, and even the 
approach of — but I must not say it yet.) Then under- 
neath the following excerpta — crossing the fs and dot- 

*Without apology for the abrupt change of field and atmosphere — after 
what I have put in the preceding pages— temporary episodes, thank heaven! 
— I restore my book to the bracing and bouyant equilibrium of concrete 
outdoor Nature, the only permant reliance for sanity of book or human life. 

Who knows, (I have it in my fancy, my ambition,) but the pages now en- 
suing may carry ray of sun, or smell of grass or corn, or call of bird or gleam 
of stars by night,or snow-flakes falling fresh and mystic, to denizen of heated 
city house, or tired workman or workwoman? — or may -be in sick-room or pris- 
on — to serve as cooling breeze, or Nature's aroma, to some fever'd mouth or 
latent pulse. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA IO5 

ting the i's of certain moderate movements of late 
years — I am fain to fancy the foundations of quite a 
lesson learn'd. After you have exhausted what there 
is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — 
have found that none of these finally satisfy, or per- 
manently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to 
bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a 
man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the 
changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of 
heaven by night. We will begin from these convic- 
tions. Literature flies so high and is so hotly spiced, 
that our notes may seem hardly more than breaths of 
common air, or draughts of water to drink. But that 
is part of our lesson. 

Dear, soothing, healthy, restoration-hours — after 
three confining years of paralysis — after the long strain 
of the war, and its wounds and death. 

ENTERING A LONG FARM-LANE 

As every man has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real 
farm-lane fenced by old chestnut-rails gray-green with 
dabs of moss and lichen, copious weeds and briers 
growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-pick'd 
stones at the fence bases — irregular paths worn be- 
tween, and horse and cow tracks — all characteristic 
accompaniments marking and scenting the neighbor- 
hood in their seasons — apple-tree blossoms in forward 
April — pigs, poultry, a field of August buckwheat, and 
in another the long flapping tassels of maize — and so 
to the pond, the expansion of the creek, the secluded- 
beautiful, with young and old trees, and such recesses 
and vistas. 



I06 AUTOBIOGRAPIIIA 

TO THE SPRING AND BROOK 

So, still sauntering on, to the spring under the wil- 
lows — musical as soft clinking glasses — pouring a size- 
able stream, thick as my neck, pure and clear, out 
from its vent where the bank arches over like a great 
brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth-roof — gurgling, gurg- 
ling ceaselessly — meaning, saying something, of course 
(if one could only translate it) — always gurgling there, 
the whole year through — never giving out — oceans of 
mint, blackberries in summer — choice of light and 
shade — just the place for my July sun-baths and water- 
baths too — but mainly the inimitable soft sound-gurgles 
of it, as I sit there hot afternoons. How they and all 
grow into me, day after day — everything in keeping — 
the wild, just-palpable perfume, and the dapple of leaf- 
shadows, and all the natural-medicinal, elemental- 
moral influences of the spot. 

Babble on, O brook, with that utterance of thine ! 
I too will express what I have gather'd in my days and 
progress, native, subterranean, past — and now thee. 
Spin and wind thy wa}^-— I with thee, a little while, at 
any rate. As I haunt thee so often, season by season, 
thou knowest reckest not me, (yet why be so certain ? 
who can tell ?) — but I will learn from thee, and dwell 
on thee — receive, copy, print from thee. 

AN EARLY SUMMER REVEILLE 
Away then to loosen, to unstring the divine bow, so 
tense, so long. Away, from curtain, carpet, sofa, book 
— from ''society" — from city house, street, and mod- 
ern improvements and luxuries — away to the primitive 
winding, aforementioned wooded creek, with its un- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA lO/ 

trimm'd bushes and turfy banks — away from ligatures, 
tight boots, buttons, and the whole cast-iron civilizee 
life — from entourage of artificial store, machine, studio, 
office, parlor — from tailordom and fashion's clothes — 
from any clothes, perhaps, for the nonce, the summer 
heats advancing, there in those watery, shaded soli- 
tudes. Away, thou soul, (let me pick thee out singly, 
reader dear, and talk in perfect freedom, negligently, 
confidentially,) for one day and night at least, return- 
ing to the naked source-life of us all — to the breast of 
the great silent savage all-acceptive Mother. Alas ! 
how many of us are so sodden — how many have wan- 
der'd so far away, that return is almost impossible. 

But to my jottings, taking them as they come, from 
the heap, without particular selection. There is little 
consecutiveness in dates. They run any time within 
nearly five or six years. Each was carelessly pencilled in 
the open air, at the time and place. The printers will 
learn this to some vexation perhaps, as much of their 
copy is from those hastily-written first notes. 

BIRDS MIGRATING AT MIDNIGHT 

Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of 
birds passing through the air and darkness overhead, 
in countless armies, changing their early or late sum- 
mer habitat ? It is something not to be forgotten. A 
friend called me up just after 12 last night to mark the 
peculiar noise of unusually immense flocks migrating 
north (rather late this year.) In the silence, shadow 
and delicious odor of the hour, (the natural perfume 
belonging to the night alone,) I thought it rare music. 



I08 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

You could hear the characteristic motion — once or 
twice '-the rush of mighty wings," but oftener a vel- 
vety rustle, long drawn out — sometimes quite near 

with continual calls and chirps, and some song-notes. 
It all lasted from 12 till after 3. Once in a while the 
species was plainly distinguishable; I could make out 
the bobolink, tanager, Wilson's thrush, white-crown'd 
sparrow, and occasionally from high in the air came 
the notes of the plover. 

SUMMER SIGHTS AND INDOLENCIES 

June loth. — As I write, 5>^ p. m., here by the creek, 
nothing can exceed the quiet splendor and freshness 
around me. We had a heavy shower, with brief thun- 
der and lightning, in the middle of the day; and since, 
overhead, one of those not uncommon yet indescrib- 
able skies (in quality, not details or forms) of limpid 
blue, with rolling silver-fringed clouds, and a pure-daz- 
zling sun. For underlay, trees in fulness of tender fo- 
liage — liquid, reedy, long-drawn notes of birds — based 
by the fretful mewing of a querulous cat-bird, and the 
pleasant chippering-shriek of two kingfishers. I have 
been watching the latter the last half hour, on their 
regular evening frolic over and in the stream; evi- 
dently a spree of the liveliest kind. They pursue each 
other, whirling and wheeling around, with many a joc- 
und downward dip, splashing the spray in jets of dia- 
monds — and then off they swoop, with slanting wings 
and graceful flight, sometimes so near me I can plainly 
see their dark-gray feather-bodies and milk-white 
necks. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA IO9 

SUNDOWN PERFUME-QUAIL-NOTES-THE HER- 
MIT-THRUSH 

June igtk, 4 to 6%, p. M. — Sitting alone by the creek 
— solitude here, but the scene bright and vivid enough 
— the sun shining, and quite a fresh wind blowing 
(some heavy showers last night,) the grass and trees 
looking their best — the clear-obscure of different 
greens, shadows, half-shadows, and the dappling 
glimpses of the water, through recesses — the wild flag- 
eolet-note of a quail near by — the just-heard fretting of 
some hylas down there in the pond — crows cawing in 
the distance — a drove of young hogs rooting in soft 
ground near the oak under which 1 sit — some come 
sniffing near me, and then scamper away, with grunts. 
And still the clear notes of the quail — the quiver of 
leaf-shadows over the paper as I write — the sky aloft, 
with white clouds, and the sun well declining to the 
west — the swift darting of many sand-swallows coming 
and going, their holes in a neighboring marl-bank — the 
odor of the cedar and oak, so palpable, as evening ap- 
proaches — perfume, color, the bronze-and-gold of near- 
ly ripen'd wheat — clover-fields, with honey-scent — the 
well-up maize, with long and rustling leaves — the great 
patches of thriving potatoes, dusky green, fleck'd alj 
over with white blossoms — the old, warty, venerable oak 
above me — and ever, mix'd with the dual notes of the 
quail, the soughing of the wind through some near-by 
pines. 

As I rise for return, I linger long to a delicious song- 
epilogue (is it the hermit-thrush?) from some bushy re- 
cess off there in the swamp, repeated leisurely and pen- 



I lO AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

sively over and over again. This, to the circle-gam- 
bols of the swallows flying by dozens in concentric 
rings in the last rays of sunset, like flashes of some airy 
wheel. 

A JULY AFTERNOON BY THE POND 

The fervent heat, but so much more endurable in 
this pure air — the white and pink pond-blossoms, with 
great heart-shaped leaves; the glassy waters of the 
creek, the banks, with dense bushery, and the pictu- 
resque beeches and shade and turf; the tremulous, 
reedy call of some bird from recesses, breaking the 
warm, indolent, half-voluptuous silence; an occasional 
wasp, hornet, honey-bee or bumble (they hover near 
my hands or face, yet annoy me not, nor I them, as 
they appear to examine, find nothing, and away they 
go) — the vast space of the sky overhead so clear, and 
the buzzard up there saiHng his slow whirl in majestic 
spirals and discs; just over the surface of the pond, two 
large slate-color'd dragon-flies, with wings of lace, circ- 
ling and darting and occasionally balancing themselves 
quite still, their wings quivering all the time, (are they 
not showing off for my amusement?) — the pond itself, 
with the sword-shaped calamus; the water snakes — oc- 
casionally a flitting blackbird, with red dabs on his 
shoulders, as he darts slantingly by— the sounds that 
bring out the solitude, warmth, light and shade — the 
quawk of some pond duck— (the crickets and grasshop- 
pers are mute in the noon heat, but I hear the song of 
the first cicadas;) — then at some distance the rattle and 
whirr of a reaping machine as the horses draw it on a 
rapid walk through a rye field on the opposite side of 



AUTOBIOGR APHIA 1 1 1 

the creek — (what was the yellow or light-brown bird, 
large as a young hen, with short neck and long- 
stretch'd legs I just saw, in flapping and awkward flight 
over there through the trees ?) — the prevailing, delicate, 
yet palpable, spicy, grassy, clovery perfume to my 
nostrils; and over ah, encircling all, to my sight 
and soul, the free space of the sky, transparent 
and blue — and hovering there in the west, a mass of 
white-gray fleecy clouds the sailors call ''shoals of 
mackerel " — the sky, with silver swirls like locks of 
toss'd hair, spreading, expanding — a vast voiceless, 
formless simulacrum — yet may-be the most real reality 
and formulator of everything — who knows ? 

LOCUSTS AND KATYDIDS 

Attg. 22. — Reedy monotones of locust, or sounds of 
katydid — I hear the latter at night, and the other both 
day and night. I thought the morning and evening 
warble of birds delightful; but I find I can listen to 
these strange insects with just as much pleasure. A 
single locust is now heard near noon from a tree two 
hundred feet off,as I write — a long whirring, continued, 
quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls, or swinging 
circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to a cer- 
tain point, and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. 
Each strain is continued from one to two minutes. 
The locust-song is very appropriate to the scene — 
gushes, has meaning, is masculine, is like some fine old 
wine, not sweet, but far better than sweet. 

Hut the katydid — how shall I describe its piquant 
utterances ? One sings from a willow-tree just outside 
my open bedroom window, twenty yards distant; every 



1 12 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

clear night for a fortnight past has sooth'd me to sleep. 
I rode through a piece of woods for a hundred rods the 
other evening, and heard the katydids by myriads — 
very curious for once; but 1 like better my single neigh- 
bor on the tree. 

THE SKY— DAYS AND NIGHTS— HAPPINESS 

Oct. 20. — A clear, crispy day — dry and breezy air, 
full of oxygen. Out of the sane, silent, beauteous 
miracles that envelop and fuse me — trees, water, grass, 
sunlight, and early frost — the one I am looking at most 
to-day is the sky. It has that delicate, transparent 
blue, peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are little 
or larger white ones, giving their still and spiritual 
motion to the great concave. All through the earlier 
day (say from 7 to ii) it keeps a pure, yet vivid blue. 
But as noon approaches the color gets lighter, quite 
gray for two or three hours — then still paler for a spell, 
till sun-down — which last I watch dazzling through the 
interstices of a knoll of big trees — darts of fire and a 
gorgeous show of light-yellow, liver-color and red, with 
a vast silver glaze askant on the water — the transparent 
shadows, shafts, sparkle, and vivid colors beyond all 
the paintings ever made. 

I don't know what or how, but it seems to me mostly 
owing to these skies, (every now and then I think, 
while I have of course seen them every day of my life, 
I never really saw the skies before,) I have had this 
autumn some wondrously contented hours — may I not 
say perfectly happy ones? As I've read, Byron just 
before his death told a friend that he had known but 
three happy hours during his whole existence. ^ Then 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 1 3 

there is the old German legend of the king's bell, to the 
same point. While I was out there by the wood, that 
beautiful sunset through the trees, I thought of Byron's 
and the bell story, and the notion started in me that I 
was having a happy hour. (Though perhaps my best 
moments I never jot down; when they come I cannot 
afford to break the charm by inditing memoranda. I 
just abandon myself to the mood, and let it float on, 
carrying me in its placid extasy.) 

What is happiness, anyhow ? Is this one of its hours, 
or the like of it ? — so impalpable — a mere breath, an 
evanescent tinge ? I am not sure — so let me give my- 
self the benefit of the doubt. Hast Thou, pellucid, in 
Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine ? (Ah, 
the physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last 
three years.) And dost Thou subtly mystically now 
drip it through the air invisibly upon me ? 

Night of Oct. 28. — The heavens unusually transpar- 
ent — the stars out by myriads — the great path of the 
Milky Way, with its branch, only seen of very clear 
nights — Jupiter, setting in the west, looks like a huge 
hap-hazard splash, and has a little star for companion. 

Clothed in his white garments. 

Into the round and clear arena slowly entered the brahmin, 
Holding a little child by the hand. 

Like the moon with the planet Jupiter in a cloudless night- 
sky. 

Old Hindu Poem. 

Early i7i November. — At its farther end the lane al- 
ready described opens into a broad grassy upland field 
of over twenty acres, slightly sloping to the south. 
Here 1 am accustom'd to walk for sky views and effects, 



114 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

either morning or sundown. To-day from this field 
my soul is calm'd and expanded beyond description, 
the whole forenoon by the clear blue arching over all, 
cloudless, nothing particular, only sky and daylight. 
Their soothing accompaniments, autumn leaves, the 
cool dry air, the faint aroma — crows cawing in the dis- 
tance — two great buzzards wheeling gracefully and 
slowly far up there — the occasional murmur of the 
wind, sometimes quite gently, then threatening through 
the trees — a gang of farm-laborers loading corn-stalks 
in a field in sight, and the patient horses waiting. 

NOVEMBER 8, '76 

The forenoon leaden and cloudy, not cold or wet, 
but indicating both. As I hobble down here and sit 
by the silent pond, how different from the excitement 
amid which, in the cities, millions of people are now 
waiting news of yesterday's Presidential election, or re- 
ceiving and discussing the result — in this secluded 
place uncared-^or, unknown. 

CROWS AND CROWS 

Nov. 14. — As I sit here by the creek, resting after my 
walk, a warm languor bathes me from the sun. No 
sound but a cawing of crows, and no motion but their 
black flying figures from overhead, reflected in the mir- 
ror of the pond below. Indeed a principal feature of the 
scene to-day is these crows, their incessant cawing, far 
or near, and their countless flocks and processions 
moving from place to place, and at times almost dark 
ening the air with their myriads. As I sit a moment 
writing this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut re-i 



\ 



\ 



AUTOBIOGR APHIA 1 1 5 

flection of them far below, flying through the watery 
looking-glass, by ones, twos, or long strings. All last 
night I heard the noises from their great roost in a 
neighboring wood. 

A WINTER DAY ON THE SEA-BEACH 

One bright December mid-day lately I spent down 
on the New Jersey sea-shore, reaching it by a little 
more than an hour's railroad trip over the old Camden 
and Atlantic. I had started betimes, fortified by nice 
strong coffee and a good breakfast (cook'd by the hands 

I iove, my dear sister Lou's — how much better it makes 
the victuals taste, and then assimilate, strengthen you, 
perhaps make the whole day comfortable afterwards.) 
Five or six miles at the last, our track enter'd a broad 
region of salt grass meadows, intersected by lagoons, 
and cut up everywhere by watery runs. The sedgy 
perfume, delightful to my nostrils, reminded me of 
'* the mash " and south bay of my native island. I 
could have journey 'd contentedly till night through 
these flat and odorous sea-prairies. From half-past 

I I till 2 I was nearly all the time along the beach, or 
in sight of the ocean, listening to its hoarse murmur, 
and inhaling the bracing and welcome breezes. First, 
a rapid five-mile drive over the hard sand — our carriage 
wheels hardly made dents in it. Then after dinner (as 
there were nearly two hours to spare) I walk'd off in 
another direction, (hardly met or saw a person,) and 
taking possession of what appear'd to have been the 
reception-room of an old bath-house range, had a 
broad expanse of view all to myself — quaint, refreshing, 
unimpeded — a dry area of sedge and Indian grass ini- 



Il6 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

mediately before and around me — space, simple, unor- 
namented space. Distant vessels, and the far-off, just 
visible trailing smoke of an inward bound steamer; 
more plainly, ships, brigs, schooners, in sight, most of 
them with every sail set to the firm and steady wind. 

The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and 
shore ! How one dwells on their simplicity, even va- 
cuity ! What is it in us, arous'd by those indirections 
and directions ? That spread of waves and gray-white 
beach, salt, monotonous, senseless — such an entire ab- 
sence of art, books, talk, elegance — so indescribably 
comforting, even this winter day — grim, yet so delicate- 
looking, so spiritual — striking emotional, impalpable 
depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music, I 
have ever read, seen, heard. (Yet let me be fair, per- 
haps it is because I have read those poems and heard 
that music.) 

SEA-SHORE FANCIES 

Even as a boy, I had the fancy, the wish, to write a 
piece, perhaps a poem, about the sea-shore — that sug- 
gesting, dividing line, contact, junction, the solid maii- 
rying the liquid — that curious, lurking something, (as 
doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the 
subjective spirit,) which means far more than its mere 
first sight, grand as that is — blending the real and 
ideal, and each made portion of the other. Hours, 
days, in my Long Island youth and early manhood, I 
haunted the shores of Rockaway or Coney Island, or 
away east to the Hamptons or Montauk. Once, at the 
latter place, (by the old lighthouse, nothing but sea- 
tossings in sight in every direction as far as the eye 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I 1/ 

could reach,) I remember well, I felt that I must one 
day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme. 
Afterward, I recollect, how it came to me that instead 
of any special lyrical or epical or literary attempt, the 
sea-shore should be an invisible influe7ice, a pervading 
gauge and tally for me, in my composition. (Let me 
give a hint here to young writers. I am not sure but I 
have unwittingly follow'd out the same rule with other 
powers besides sea and shores — avoiding them, in the 
way of any dead set at poetizing them, as too big for 
formal handling — quite satisfied if I could indirectly 
show that we have met and fused, even if only once, 
but enough — that we have really absorb'd each other 
and understand each other.) 

There is a dream, a picture, that for years at inter- 
vals, (sometimes quite long ones, but surely again, in 
time,) has come noiselessly up before me, and I really 
believe, fiction as it is, has enter'd largely into my 
practical life — certainly into my writings, and shaped 
and color'd them. It is nothing more or less than a 
stretch of interminable white-brown sand, hard and 
smooth and broad, with the ocean perpetually, grand- 
ly, rolling in upon it, with slow-measured sweep, with 
rustle and hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low 
bass drums. This scene, this picture, I say, has risen 
before me at times for years. Sometimes I wake at 
night and can hear and see it plainly. 

A TWO HOURS' ICE-SAIL 

Feb. J, 'yy. — From 4 to 6 v. i\i. crossing the Dela- 
ware, (back again eit my Camden home,) unable to 



Il8 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

make our landing, through the ice; our boat stanch 
and strong and skilfully piloted, but old and sulky, 
and poorly minding her helm. {Power, so important 
in poetry and war, is also first point of all in a winter 
steamboat, with long stretches of ice-packs to tackle.) 
For over two hours we bump'd and beat about, the invis- 
ible ebb, sluggish but irresistible, often carrying us long 
distances against our will. In the first tinge of dusk, 
as I look'd around, I thought there could not be pre- 
sented a more chilling, arctic, grim-extended, depress- 
ing scene. Everything was yet plainly visible; for 
miles north and south, ice, ice, ice, mostly broken, but 
some big cakes, and no clear water in sight. The 
shores, piers, surfaces, roofs, shipping, mantled with 
snow. A faint winter vapor hung a fitting accompani- 
ment around and over the endless whitish spread, and 
gave it just a tinge of steel and brown. 

Feb. 6. — As I cross home in the 6 P. M. boat again, 
the transparent shadows are filled everywhere with 
leisurely falling, slightly slanting, curiously sparse but 
very large, flakes of ~snow. On the shores, near and 
far, the glow of just-lit gas-clusters at intervals. The 
ice, sometimes in hummocks, sometimes floating fields, 
through which our boat goes crunching. The light 
permeated by that peculiar evening haze, right after 
sunset, which sometimes renders quite distant objects 
so distinctly. 

SPRING OVERTURES— RECREATIONS 

Feb. Z(9.— The first chirping, almost singing, of a 
bird to-day. Then I noticed a couple of honey-bees 



I 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 19 

spirting and humming about the open window in the 
sun. 

Feb. II. — In the soft rose and pale gold of the de- 
clining light, this beautiful evening, I heard the first 
hum and preparation of awakening spring — very faint 
— whether in the earth or roots, or starting of insects, 
I know not — but it was audible, as I lean'd on a rail (I 
am down in my country quarters awhile,) and look'd 
long at the western horizon. Turning to the east, 
Sirius, as the shadows deepen'd, came forth in dazzling 
splendor. And great Orion; and a little to the north- 
east the big Dipper, standing on end. 

Feb. 20. — A solitary and pleasant sundown hour at 
the pond, exercising arms, chest, my whole body, by a 
tough oak sapling thick as my wrist, twelve feet high 
— pulling and pushing, inspiring the good air. After 
I wrestle with the tree awhile, I can feel its young sap 
and virtue welling up out of the ground and tingling 
through me from crown to toe, like health's wine. 
Then for addition and variety I launch forth in my 
vocalism; shout declamatory pieces, sentiments, sor- 
row, anger, &c., from the stock poets or plays — or in- 
flate my lungs and sing the wild tunes and refrains I 
heard of the blacks down south, or patriotic songs I 
learn 'd in the army. I make the echoes ring, 1 tell 
you ! As the twilight fell, in a pause of these ebulli- 
tions, an owl somewhere the other side of the creek 
sounded too-00-00-00-00, soft and pensive (and I fancied 
a little sarcastic) repeated four or five times. Either 
to applaud the negro songs — or perhaps an ironical 
comment on the sorrow, anger, or style of the stock 
poets. 



I20 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 



THE GATES OPENING 



April 6. — Palpable spring indeed, or the indications 
of it. I am sitting in bright sunshine, at the edge of 
the creek, the surface just rippled by the wind. All is 
solitude, morning freshness, negligence. For compan- 
ions my two kingfishers sailing, winding, darting, dip- 
ping, sometimes capriciously separate, then flying to- 
gether. I hear their guttural twittering again and 
again; for awhile nothing but that peculiar sound. As 
noon approaches other birds warm up. The reedy 
notes of the robin, and a musical passage of two parts, 
one a clear delicious gurgle, with several other birds I 
cannot place. To which is join'd, (yes, I just hear it,) 
one low purr at intervals from some impatient hylas at 
the pond-edge. The sibilant murmur of a pretty stiff 
breeze now and then through the trees. Then a poor 
little dead leaf, long frost-bound, whirls from some- 
where up aloft in one wild escaped freedom-spree in 
space and sunlight, and then dashes down to the wa- 
ters, which hold it closely and soon drown it out of 
sight. The bushes and trees are yet bare, but the 
beeches have their wrinkled yellow leaves of last sea- 
son's foliage largely left, frequent cedars and pines yet 
green, and the grass not without proofs of coming ful- 
ness. And over all a wonderfully fine dome of clear 
blue, the play of light coming and going, and great 
fleeces of white clouds swimming so silently. 

FULL-STARR'D NIGHTS 
May 21. — Back in Camden. Again commencing one 
of those unusually transparent, full-starr'd, blue-black 
nights, as if to show that however lush and pompous 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 121 

the day may be, there is something left in the not-day 
that can outvie it. The rarest, finest sample of long- 
drawn-out clear-obscure, from sundown to 9 o'clock. I 
went down to the Delaware, and cross'd and cross'd. 
Venus like blazing silver well up in the west. The 
large pale thin crescent of the new moon, half an hour 
high, sinking languidly under a bar-sinister of cloud, 
and then emerging. Arcturus right overhead. A faint 
fragrant sea-odor wafted up from the south. The 
gloaming, the temper'd coolness, with every feature of 
the scene, indescribably soothing and tonic — one of 
those hours that give hints to the soul, impossible to 
put in a statement. (Ah, where would be any food for 
spirituality without night and the stars ?) The vacant 
spaciousness of the air, and the veil'd blue of the heav- 
ens, seem'd miracles enough. 

As the night advanc'd it changed its spirit and gar- 
ments to ampler stateliness. I was almost conscious of 
a definite presence, Nature silently near. The great 
constellation of the Water-Serpent stretch'd its coils 
over more than half the heavens. The Swan with out- 
spread wings was flying down the Milky Way. The 
northern Crown, the Eagle, Lyra, all up there in their 
places. From the whole dome shot down points of 
light, rapport with me, through the clear blue-black. 
All the usual sense of motion, all animal life, seem'd 
discarded, seem'd a fiction; a curious power, like the 
placid rest of Egyptian gods, took possession, none the 
less potent for being impalpable. Earlier I had 
seen many bats, balancing in the luminous twilight, 
darting their black forms hither and yon over the riv- 
er; but now they altogether disappear'd. The exening 



122 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

star and the moon had gone. Alertness and peace lay 

calmly couching together through the fluid universal 

shadows. 

A SUN-BATH— NAKEDNESS 

Sunday, Aug. 2y. — Another day quite free from 
mark'd prostration and pain. It seems indeed as if 
peace and nutriment from heaven subtly filter into me 
as I slowly hobble down these country lanes and across 
fields, in the good air — as I sit here in solitude with 
Nature — open, voiceless, mystic, far removed, yet pal- 
pable, eloquent Nature. I merge myself in the scene, 
in the perfect day. Hovering over the clear brook- 
water, I am sooth'd by its soft gurgle in one place, and 
the hoarser murmurs of its three-foot fall in another. 
Come, ye disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility 
is left — come get the sure virtues of creek-shore, and 
wood and field. Two months (July and August, '^^,) 
have I absorb'd them, and they begin to make a new 
man of me. Every day, seclusion — every day at least 
two or three hours of freedom, bathing, no talk, no 
bonds, no dress, no books, no nianiiers. 

Shall I tell you, reader, to what I attribute my al- 
ready much-restored health ? That 1 have been almost 
two years, off and on, without drugs and medicines, 
and daily in the open air. Last summer I found a 
particularly secluded little dell off one side by my 
creek, originally a large dug-out marl-pit, now aban- 
don'd, fill'd with bushes, trees, grass, a group of wil- 
lows, a straggling bank, and a spring of delicious water 
running right through the middle of it, with two or 
three little cascades. Here I retreated every hot day, 
and follow it up this summer. Here I realize th^ 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I23 

meaning of that old fellow who said he was seldom 
less alone than when alone. Never before did I get so 
close to Nature; never before did she come so close to 
me. By old habit, I pencill'd down from time to time, 
almost automatically, moods, sights, hours, tints and 
outlines, on the spot. Let me specially record the sat- 
isfaction of this current forenoon, so serene and primi- 
tive, so conventionally exceptional, natural. 

An hour or so after breakfast I wended my way 
down to the recesses of the aforesaid dell, which I and 
certain thrushes, cat-birds, &c., had all to ourselves. 
A light south-west wind was blowing through the tree- 
tops. It was just the place and time for my Adamic 
air-bath and flesh-brushing from head to foot. So 
hanging clothes on a rail near by, keeping old broad- 
brim straw on head and easy shoes on feet, haven't I 
had a good time the last two hours ! First with the 
stiff-elastic bristles rasping arms, breast, sides, till they 
turn'd scarlet — then partially bathing in the clear 
waters of the running brook — taking everything very 
leisurely, with many rests and pauses — stepping about 
barefooted every few minutes now and then in some 
neighboring black ooze for unctuous mud-bath to my 
feet — a brief second and third rinsing in the crystal 
running waters — rubbing with the fragrant towel — slow 
negligent promenades on the turf up and down in the 
sun, varied with occasional rests, and further frictions 
of the bristle-brush — sometimes carrying my portable 
chair with me from place to place, as my range is quite 
extensive here, nearly a hundred rods, feeling quite se- 
cure from intrusion, (and that indeed I am not at all 
nervous about, if it accidentally happens.) 



124 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

As I walk'd slowly over the grass, the sun shone out 
enough to show the shadow moving with me. Some- 
how I seem'd to get identity with each and everything 
around me, in its condition. Nature was naked, and 
I was also. It was too lazy, soothing, and joyous- 
equable to speculate about. Yet I might have thought 
somehow in this vein: Perhaps the inner never lost 
rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, &c., is 
not to be realized through eyes and mind only, but 
through the w^hole corporeal body, which I will not 
have blinded or bandaged any more than the eyes. 
Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature I — ah if poor, 
sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know 
you once more I Is not nakedness then indecent? 
No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophisti- 
cation, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. 
There come moods when these clothes of ours are not 
only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. 
Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhila- 
rating extasy of nakedness in Nature has never been 
eligible (and how many thousands there are !) has not 
really known what purity is— nor w^hat faith or art or 
health really is. (Probably the whole curriculum of 
first-class philosophy, beauty, heroism, form, illustrated 
by the old Hellenic race — the highest height and deep- 
est depth known to civilization in those departments — 
came from their natural and religious ideaof Nakedness.) 

Many such hours, from time to time, the last two 
summers — I attribute my partial rehabilitation largely 
to them. Some good people may think it a feeble or 
half-crack'd way of spending one's time and thinking. 
May-be it is. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I25 

THE OAKS AND I 

Sept. J, '77. — I write this, 11 A. M., shelter'd under a 
dense oak by the bank, where I have taken refuge 
from a sudden rain. I came down here, (we had sulky 
drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull,) for 
the before-mention'd daily and simple exercise I am 
fond of — to pull on that young hickory sapling out 
there — to sway and yield to its tough-limber upright 
stem — haply to get into my old sinews some of its elas- 
tic fibre and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take 
these health-pulls moderately and at intervals for near- 
ly an hour, inhaling great draughts of fresh air. Wan- 
dering by the creek, I have three or four naturally fa- 
vorable spots where I rest — besides a chair I lug with 
me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other 
spots convenient I have selected, besides the hickory 
just named, strong and limber boughs of beech or hol- 
ly, in easy-reaching distance, for my natural gymnasia, 
for arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can soon feel the 
sap and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. 
I hold on boughs or slender trees caressingly there in 
the sun and shade, wrestle with their innocent stalwart- 
ness — and knoiu\\\^ virtue thereof passes from them in- 
to me. (Or may-be we interchange — may-be the trees 
are more aware of it all than I ever thought.) 

But now pleasantly imprisonVl here under the big 
oak — the rain dripping, and the sky cover'd with lead- 
en clouds — nothing but the pond on one side, and the 
other a spread of grass, spotted with the milky blos- 
soms of the wild (^arrot — the soniul of an axe wielded 
at some distant w()(jd-j)ile— yet in this dull s(X!ne, (as 



126 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

most folks would call it,) why am I so (almost) happy 
here and alone? Why would any intrusion, even 
from people I like, spoil the charm ? But am I alone ? 
Doutless there comes a time — perhaps it has come to 
me — when one feels through his whole being, and pro- 
nouncedly the emotional part, that identity between 
himself subjectively and Nature objectively which 
Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it 
is I know not, but I often realize a presence here — in 
clear moods I am certain of it, and neither chemistry 
nor reasoning nor esthetics will give the least explana- 
tion. All the past two summers it has been strength- 
ening and nourishing my sick body and soul, as never 
before. Thanks, invisible physician, for thy silent 
delicious medicine, thy day and night, thy waters and 
thy airs, the banks, the grass, the trees, and e'en the 
weeds ! 

A QUINTETTE 

While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter 
of my great oak, (perfectly dry and comfortable, to 
the rattle of the drops all around,) I have pencill'd off 
the mood of the hour in a little quintette, which I will 
give you: 

At vacancy with Nature, 
Acceptive and at ease, 
Distilling the present hour, 
Whatever, wherever it is, 
And over the past, oblivion. 

Can you get hold of it, reader dear? and how do you 
like it anyhow ? 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 12/ 

THE FIRST FROST— MEMS 

Where I was stopping I saw the first palpable frost, 
on my sunrise walk, October 6; all over the yet-green 
spread a light blue-gray veil, giving a new show to the 
entire landscape. I had but little time to notice it, 
for the sun rose cloudless and mellow-warm, and as I 
returned along the lane it had turned to glittering 
patches of wet. As I walk I notice the bursting pods 
of wild cotton, (Indian hemp they call it here,) with 
flossy-silky contents, and dark red-brown seeds — a 
startled rabbit — I pull a handful of the balsamic life- 
everlasting and stuff it down in my trowsers-pocket for 
scent. 

FEBRUARY DAYS 

February 7, iS'jS. — Glistening sun to-day, with 
slight haze, warm enough, and yet tart, as I sit here in 
the open air, down in my country retreat, under an old 
cedar. For two hours I have been idly wandering 
around the woods and pond, lugging my chair, picking 
out choice spots to sit awhile — then up and slowly on 
again. All is peace here. Of course, none of the 
summer noises or vitality: to-day hardly even the win- 
ter ones. I amuse myself by exercising my voice in 
recitations, and in ringing the changes on all the vo- 
cal and alphabetical sounds. Not even an echo; only 
the cawing of a solitary crow, flying at some distance. 
The pond is one bright, flat spread, without a ripple — 
a vast Claude Lorraine glass, in which 1 study the sky, 
the light, the leafless trees, and an occasional crow, 
with flapping wings, flying overhead. The brown 
fields have a few white patches of snow left. 



128 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

Feb. g. — After an hour's ramble, now retreating, rest- 
ing, sitting close by the pond, in a warm nook, writing 
this, shelter'd from the breeze, just before noon. The 
emotional aspects and influences of Nature ! I, too, 
like the rest, feel these modern tendencies (from all the 
prevailing intellections, literature and poems,) to turn 
everything to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfaction, 
death. Yet how clear it is to me that those are not 
the born results, influences of Nature at all, but of one's 
own distorted, sick or silly soul. Here, amid this wild, 
free scene, how healthy, how joyous, how clean and 
vigorous and sweet ! 

Mid-after 110011. — One of my nooks is south of the 
barn, and here I am sitting now, on a log, still basking 
in the sun, shielded from the wind. Near me are the 
cattle, feeding on corn-stalks. Occasionally a cow or 
the young bull (how handsome and bold he is !) 
scratches and munches the far end of the log on which 
I sit. The fresh milky odor is quite perceptible, also 
the perfume of hay from the barn. The perpetual rus- 
tle of dry corn-stalks, the low sough of the wind round 
the barn gables, the grunting of pigs, the distant whis- 
tle of a locomotive, and occasional crowing of chanti- 
cleers, are the sounds. 

Feb. ig. — Cold and sharp last night — clear and not 
much wind — the full moon shining, and a fine spread 
of constellations and little and big stars — Sirius very 
bright, rising early, preceded by many-orb'd Orion, 
glittering, vast, sworded, and chasing with his dog. 
The earth hard frozen, and a stiff glare of ice over the 
pond. Attracted by the calm splendor of the night, 
I attempted a short walk, but was driven back by the 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 29 

cold. Too severe for me also at 9 o'clock, when I came 
out this morning, so 1 turn'd back again. But now, 
near noon, I have walk'd down the lane, basking all 
the way in the sun (this farm has a pleasant southerly 
exposure,) and here I am, seated under the lee of a 
bank, close by the water. There are blue-birds already 
flying about, and I hear much chirping and twittering 
and two or three real songs, sustain'd quite awhile, in 
the mid-day brilliance and warmth. (There ! that is a 
true carol, coming out boldly and repeatedly, as if the 
singer meant it.) Then as the noon strengthens, the 
reedy trill of the robin — to my ear the most cheering of 
bird-notes. At intervals, like bars and breaks (out of 
the lov/ murmur that in any scene, however quiet, is 
never entirely absent to a delicate ear,) the occasional 
crunch and cracking of the ice-glare congeal'd over the 
creek, as it gives way to the sunbeams — sometimes 
with low sigh — sometimes with indignant, obstinate 
tug and snort. 

(Robert Burns says in one of his letters: " There is 
scarcely any earthly object gives me more — I do not 
know if 1 should call it pleasure — but something which 
exalts me — something which enraptures me — than to 
walk in the shclter'd side of a wood in a cloudy winter 
day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the 
trees, and raving over the plain. It is my best season 
of devotion." Some of his most characteristic poems 
were comprised in such scenes and seasons.) 

A MEADOW LARK 

MarcJi 16. — r^ine, clear, daz/liiii; morning, the sun 
an hour high, the air just tart enough. What a slam[) 



130 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

in advance my whole day receives from the song 
of that meadow lark perch'd on a fence-stake 
twenty rods distant ! Two or three liquid-simple 
notes, repeated at intervals, full of careless happiness 
and hope. With its peculiar shimmering-slow progress 
and rapid-noiseless action of the wings, it flies on a 
ways, lights on another stake, and so on to another, 
shimmering and singing many minutes. 

SUNDOWN LIGHTS 

May 6, $ P. M. — This is the hour for strange effects 
in light and shade— enough to make a colorist go de- 
lirious — long spokes of molten silver sent horizontally 
through the trees (now in their brightest tenderest 
green,) each leaf and branch of endless foliage a lit-up 
miracle, then lying all prone on the youthful-ripe, in- 
terminable grass, and giving the blades not only ag- 
gregate but individual splendor, in ways unknown to 
any other hour. I have particular spots where I get 
these effects in their perfection. One broad splash lies 
on the water, with many a rippling twinkle, offset by 
the rapidly deepening black-green murky-transparent 
shadows behind, and at intervals all along the banks. 
These, with great shafts of horizontal fire thrown 
among the trees and along the grass as the sun lowers, 
give effects more and more peculiar, more and more su- 
perb, unearthly, rich and dazzling. 

THOUGHTS UNDER AN OAK— A DREAM 

Jmie 2. — This is the fourth day of a dark northeast 
storm, wind and rain. Day before yesterday was my 
birthday. I have nov/ enter'd on my 6oth year. Every 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I3I 

day of the storm, protected by overshoes and a water- 
proof blanket, I regularly come down to the pond, and 
ensconce myself under the lee of the great oak; I am 
here now writing these lines. The dark smoke-cclor'd 
clouds roll in furious silence athwart the sky; the soft 
green leaves dangle all round me; the wind steadily 
keeps up its hoarse, soothing music over my head — 
Nature's mighty whisper. Seated here in solitude I 
have been musing over my life — connecting events, 
dates, as links of a chain, neither sadly nor cheerily, 
but somehow, to-day here under the oak, in the rain, 
in an unusually matter-of-fact spirit. 

But my great oak — sturdy, vital, green — five feet 
thick at the butt. I sit a great deal near or under him. 
Then the tulip tree near by — the Apollo of the woods 
— tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy, inimitable 
in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if the 
beauteous, vital, leafy creature could walk, if it only 
would. (I had a sort of dream-trance the other day, in 
which I saw my favorite trees step out and promenade 
up, down and around, very curiously — with a whisper 
from one, leaning down as he pass'd me, We do ail 
this on tiie present occasion, exceptionally , jitst for youi) 

CLOVER AND HAY PERFUME 

July jd, 4th, ^tli. — Clear, hot, favorable weather — 
has been a good summer — the growth of clover and 
grass now generally movv'd. The familiar delicious 
])crfume fills the barns and lanes. As you go along 
you see the ficlfls of grayish white; slightly tinged with 
yellow, the loosely stackVl grain, the slow-moving 
wagons passing, and farmers in the fields with stcnit 



132 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

boys pitching and loading the sheaves. The corn is 
about beginning to tassel. All over the middle and 
southern states the spear-shaped battalia, multitudi- 
nous, curving, flaunting — long, glossy, dark-green 
plumes for the great horseman, earth. I hear the 
cheery notes of my old acquaintance Tommy quail; 
but too late for the whip-poor-will, (though 1 heard 
one solitary lingerer night before last.) I watch the 
broad majestic flight of a turkey-buzzard, sometimes 
high up, sometimes low enough to see the lines of his 
form, even his spread quills, in relief against the sky. 
Once or twice lately I have seen an eagle here at early 
candle-light flying low. 

AN UNKNOWN 
June 7j. — To-day I noticed a new large bird, size of a 
nearly grown hen — a haughty, white-bodied dark- 
wing'd hawk — I suppose a hawk from his bill and gen- 
eral look — only he had a clear, loud, quite musical, 
sort of bell-like call, which he repeated again and again, 
at intervals, from a lofty dead tree-top, overhanging 
the water. Sat there a long time, and I on the oppo- 
site bank watching him. Then he darted down, skim- 
ming pretty close to the stream — rose slowly, a magnif- 
icent sight, and sail'd with steady wide-spread wings, 
no flapping at all, up and down the pond two or three 
times, near me, in circles in clear sight, as if for my 
delectation. Once he came quite close over my head; 
I saw plainly his hook'd bill and hard restless eyes. 

BIRD-WHISTLING 
How much music (wild, simple, savage, doubtless, 
but so tart-sweet,) there is in mere whistling. It is 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 33 

four-fifths of the utterance of birds. There are all sorts 
and styles. For the last half-hour, now, while I have 
been sitting here, some feather'd fellow away off in the 
bushes has been repeating over and over again what I 
may call a kind of throbbing whistle. And nowabird 
about the robin size has just appear 'd, all mulberry red, 
flitting among the bushes — head, wings, body, deep 
red, not very bright — no song, as I have heard. 4 
d clock: There is a real concert going on around me — a 
dozen different birds pitching in with a will. There 
have been occasional rains, and the growths all show 
its vivifying influences. As I finish this, seated on a 
log close by the pond-edge, much chirping and trilling 
in the distance, and a feather'd recluse in the woods 
near by is singing deliciously — not many notes, but full 
of music of almost human sympathy — continuing for a 
long, long while. 

HORSE-MINT 

Aug. 22. — Not a human being, and hardly the evi- 
dence of one, in sight. After my brief semi-daily bath, 
I sit here for a bit, the brook musically brawling, to 
the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-bird somewhere off 
in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since, 
through fields and the old lane, I stopt to view, now 
the sky, now the mile-off woods on the hill, and now 
the apple orchards. What a contrast from New York's 
or Philadelphia's streets ! Everywhere great patches of 
dingy- blossom'd horse- mint wafting a spicy odor 
through the air, (especially evenings.) Everywhere 
the flowering bonesct, and the rose-bloom of the wild 
bean. 



134 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 



THREE OF US 



July 14. — My two kingfishers still haunt the pond. 
In the bright sun and breeze and perfect temperature 
of to-day, noon, I am sitting here by one of the gurg- 
ling brooks, dipping a French water-pen in the limpid 
crystal, and using it to write these lines, again watch- 
ing the feather'd twain, as they fly and sport athwart the 
water, so close, almost touching into its surface. In- 
deed there seem to be three of us. For nearly an hour 
I indolently look and join them while they dart and 
turn and take their airy gambols, sometimes far up the 
creek disappearing for a few moments, and then surely 
returning again, and performing most of their flight 
within sight of me, as if they knew I appreciated and 
absorb'd their vitality, spirituality, faithfulness, and the 
rapid, vanishing, delicate lines of moving yet quiet 
electricity they draw for me across the spread of the 
grass, the trees, and the blue sky. While the brook 
babbles, babbles, and the shadows of the boughs dap- 
ple in the sunshine around me, and the cool west by- 
nor'-west wind faintly soughs in the thick bushes and 
tree tops. 

Among the objects of beauty and interest now begin- 
ning to appear quite plentifully in this secluded spot, I 
notice the humming-bird, the dragon-fly with its wings 
of slate-color'd gauze, and many varieties of beautiful 
and plain butterflies, idly flapping among the plants 
and wild posies. The mullein has shot up out of its 
nest of broad leaves, to a tall stalk towering sometimes 
five or six feet high, now studded with knobs of golden 
blossoms. The milk -weed, (I see a great gorgeous 



AUTOBIOGFAPHIA 1 35 

creature of gamboge and black lighting on one as I 
write,) is in flower, with its delicate red fringe; and 
there are profuse clusters of a feathery blossom waving 
in the wind on taper stems. I see lots of these and 
much else in every direction, as I saunter or sit. For 
the last half hour a bird has persistently kept up a 
simple, sweet, melodious song, from the bushes. (I 
have a positive conviction that some of these birds 
sing, and others fly and flirt about here, for m}^ especial 
benefit.) 

DEATH OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

New York City. — Came on from West Philadelphia, 
June 13, in the 2 p. m. train to Jersey city, and so 
across and to my friends, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. J., and 
their large house, large family (and large hearts,) amid 
which I feel at home, at peace — away up on Fifth 
avenue, near Eighty-sixth street, quiet, breezy, over- 
looking the dense woody fringe of the park — plenty of 
space and sky, birds chirping, and air comparatively 
fresh and odorless. Two hours before starting, saw 
the announcement of William Cullen Bryant's funeral, 
and felt a strong desire to attend. I had known Mr. 
Bryant over thirty years ago, and he had been mark- 
edly kind to me. Ofl and on, along that time for years 
as they pass'd, we met and chatted together. I thought 
him very sociable in his way, and a man to become 
attach'd to. We were both walkers, and when I 
work'd in Brooklyn he several times came over, mid- 
dle of afternoons, and we took rambles miles long, till 
dark, out towards Bedford or Flatbush, in company. 
On these occasi(;ns he gave me clear accounts of scenes 



136 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

in Europe — the cities, looks, architecture, art, especially 
Italy — where he had travel'd a good deal. 

Jii7ie 14. — The Funeral. — And so the good, stainless, 
noble old citizen and poet lies in the closed coffin there 
— and this is his funeral. A solemn, impressive, sim- 
ple scene, to spirit and senses. The remarkable gath- 
ering of gray heads, celebrities — the finely render 'd 
anthem, and other music — the church, dim even now 
at approaching noon, in its light from the mellow- 
stain'd windows — ^the pronounc'd eulogy on the bard 
who loved Nature so fondly, and sung so well her 
shows and seasons — ending with these appropriate 
well-known lines: 

I gazed upon the glorious sky, 

And the green mountains round, 
And thought that when I came to lie 

At rest within the ground, 
'Twere pleasant that in flowery June, 
When brooks send up a joyous tune, 

And groves a cheerful sound. 
The sexton's hand, my grave to make, 
The rich green mountain turf should break. 

JAUNT UP THE HUDSON 

jM7ie 20th. — On the ''Mary Powell," en joy'd every- 
thing beyond precedent. The delicious tender sum- 
mer day, just warm enough — the constantly changing 
but ever beautiful panorama on both sides of the river 
— (went up near a hundred miles) — the high straight 
walls of the stony Palisades— beautiful Yonkers, and 
beautiful Irvington — the never-ending hills, mostly in 
rounded lines, swathed with verdure, — the distant turns. 



AUTOBIOGR APHI A I 37 

like great shoulders in blue veils — the frequent gray 
and brown of the tall-rising rocks— the river itself, now 
narrowing, now expanding — the white sails of the many 
sloops, yachts, &c., some near, some in the distance — 
the rapid succession of handsome villages and cities, 
(our boat is a swift traveler, and makes few stops) — the 
Race — picturesque West Point, and indeed all along — 
the costly and often turreted mansions forever showing 
in some cheery light color, through the woods — make 
up the scene. 

HAPPINESS AND RASPBERRIES 

June 21. — Here I am, on the west bank of the Hud- 
son, 80 miles north of New York, near Esopus, at the 
handsome, roomy, honeysuckle-and-rose-embower'd 
cottage of John Burroughs. The place, the perfect 
June days and nights, (leaning toward crisp and cool,) 
the hospitality of J. and Mrs. B., the air, the fruit, 
(especially my favorite dish, currants and raspberries, 
mixed, sugar'd, fresh and ripe from the bushes — I pick 
'em myself) — the room I occupy at night, the perfect 
bed, the window giving an ample view of the Hudson 
and the opposite shores, so wonderful toward sunset, 
and the rolling music of the RR. trains, far over there 
— the peaceful rest — the early Venus-heralded dawn — 
the noiseless splash of sunrise, the light and warmth 
indescribably glorious, in which, (soon as the sun is 
well up,) I have a capital rul)bing and rasping with the 
flesh-brush — with an extra scour on the back by Al. J., 
who is here with us — all inspiriting my invalid frame 
with new life, for the day. Then, after some whiffs of 
morning air, the delicious coru-c of Mrs. li., with the 



138 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

cream, strawberries, and many substantials, for break- 
fast. 

A SPECIMEN TRAMP FAMILY 

June 22. — This afternoon we went out (J. B., Al. and 
I) on quite a drive around the country. The scenery, 
the perpetual stone fences, (some venerable old fel- 
lows, dark-spotted with lichens) — the many fine locust- 
trees — the runs of brawling water, often over descents 
of rock — these, and lots else. It is lucky the roads are 
first-rate here, (as they are,) for it is up or down hill 
everywhere, and sometimes steep enough. B. has a 
tip-top horse, strong, young, and both gentle and fast. 
There is a great deal of waste land and hills on the 
river edge of Ulster county, with a wonderful luxuri- 
ance of wild flowers and bushes — and it seems to me I 
never saw more vitality of trees — eloquent hemlocks, 
plenty of locusts and fine maples, and the balm of 
Gilead, giving out aroma. In the fields and along the 
road-sides unusual crops of the tall-stemm'd wild 
daisy, white as milk and yellow as gold. 

We pass'd quite a num.ber of tramps, singly or in 
couples — one squad, a family in a rickety one-horse 
wagon, with some baskets evidently their work and 
trade — the man seated on a low board, in front, driv- 
ing — the gauntish woman by his side, with a baby well 
bundled in her arms, its little red feet and lowxr legs 
sticking out right towards us as we pass'd — and in the 
wagon behind, we saw two (or three) crouching little 
children. It was a queer, taking, rather sad picture. If 
I had been alone on foot, I should have stopp'd and held 
confab. But on our return nearly two hours afterward, 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 39 

we found them a ways further along the same road, in 
a lonesome open spot, haul'd aside, unhitch'd, and evi- 
dently going to camp for the night. The freed horse 
was not far ofif, quietly cropping the grass. The man 
was busy at the wagon, the boy had gather'd some dry 
wood, and was making a fire — and as we went a little 
further we met the woman afoot. I could not see her 
face, in its great sun-bonnet, but somehow her figure 
and gait told misery, terror, destitution. She had the 
rag-bundled, half-starv'd infant still in her arms, and 
in her hands held two or three baskets, which she had 
evidently taken to the next house for sale. A little 
barefoot five-year old girl-child, with fine eyes, trotted 
behind her, clutching her gown. We stopp'd, asking 
about the baskets, which we bought. As we paid the 
money, she kept her face hidden in the recesses of her 
bonnet. Then as we started, and stopp'd again, Al., 
(whose sympathies were evidently arous'd,) went back 
to the camping group to get another basket. He caught 
a look of her face, and talk'd with her a little. Eyes, 
voice and manner were those of a corpse, animated by 
electricity. She was quite young — the man she was 
traveling with, middle-aged. Poor woman — what 
story was it, out of her fortunes, to account for that 
inexpressibly scared way, those glassy eyes, and that 
hollow voice ? 

MANHATTAN FROM THE HAY 

June 2j. — Returned to New York last night. Out 
to-day on the waters for a sail in the wide bay, south- 
east of Staten island — a rough, tossing ride, and a free 
sight — the l(mg stretch of Sandy Hook, the highhinds 



I40 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

of Navesink, and the many vessels outward and inward 
bound. We came up through the midst of all, in the 
full sun. I especially enjoy'd the last hour or two. A 
moderate sea-breeze had set in; yet over the city, and 
the waters adjacent, was a thin haze, concealing noth- 
ing, only adding to the beauty. From my point of 
view, as I write amid the soft breeze, with a sea-tem- 
perature, surely nothing on earth of its kind can go 
beyond this show. To the left the North river with 
its far vista — nearer, three or four w^ar-ships, anchor'd 
peacefully — the Jersey side, the banks of Weehawken, 
the Palisades, and the gradually receding blue, lost in 
the distance — to the right the East river — the mast- 
hemm'd shores — the grand obelisk-like towers of the 
bridge, one on either side, in haze, yet plainly defin'd, 
giant brothers twain, throwing free graceful interlink- 
ing loops high across the tumbled tumultuous current 
below^ — (the tide is just changing to its ebb) — the 
broad water-spread everywhere crowded — no, not 
crowded, but thick as stars in the sky — with all sorts 
and sizes of sail and steam vessels, plying ferry-boats, 
arriving and departing coasters, great ocean Dons, 
iron-black, modern, magnificent in size and power, 
fill'd with their incalculable value of human life and 
precious merchandise — with here and there, above all, 
those daring, careening things of grace and wonder, 
those white and shaded swift-darting fish-birds, (I 
wonder if shore or sea elsewhere can outvie them,) 
ever with their slanting spars, and fierce, pure, hawk- 
like beauty and motion — first-class New York sloop or 
schooner yachts, sailing, this fine day, the free sea in 
a good wind. And rising out of the midst, tall-topt. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I4I 

ship-hemm'd, modern, American, yet strangely orien- 
tal, V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, its 
spires, its cloud-touching edifices group'd at the centre 
— the green of the trees, and all the white, brown and 
gray of the architecture well blended, as I see it, under 
a miracle of limpid sky, delicious light of heaven 
above, and June haze on the surface below. 

HOURS FOR THE SOUL 

July 22(1, i8y8. — Living down in the country again. 
A wonderful conjunction of all that goes to make 
those sometime miracle-hours after sunset — so near 
and yet so far. Perfect, or nearly perfect days, I no- 
tice, are not so very uncommon; but the combinations 
that make perfect nights are few, even in a life time. 
We have one of those perfections to-night. Sunset 
left things pretty clear; the larger stars were visible 
soon as the shades allow'd. A while after 8, three or 
four great black clouds suddenly rose, seemingly from 
different points, and sweeping with broad swirls of 
wind but no thunder, underspread the orbs from view 
everywhere, and indicated a violent heat-storm. But 
without storm, clouds, blackness and all, sped and 
vanish'd as suddenly as they had risen; and from a lit- 
tle after 9 till 1 1 the atmosphere and the whole show 
abvove were in that state of exceptional clearness and 
glory just alluded to. In the northwest turned the 
(xrcat Dipper with its pointers round the Cynosure. A 
little south of east the constellation of the Scorpion 
was fully up, with red Antares glowing in its neck: 
while dominating, majestic Ju])itcr swam, an hour and 
a half risen, in the east — (no moon till after 11.) A 



142 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

large part of the sky seem'd just laid in great splashes 
of phosphorus. You could look deeper in, farther 
through, than usual; the orbs thick as heads of wheat 
in a held. Not that there was any special brilliancy 
either — nothing near as sharp as I have seen of keen 
winter nights, but a curious general luminousness 
throughout to sight, sense, and soul. The latter had 
much to do with it. (I am convinced there are hours 
of Nature, especially of the atmosphere, mornings and 
evenings, address'd to the soul. Night transcends, for 
that purpose, what the proudest day can do.) Now, 
indeed, if never before, the heavens declared the glory 
of God. It was to the full the sky of the Bible, of 
Arabia, of the prophets, and of the oldest poems. 
There, in abstraction and stillness, (I had gone off by 
myself to absorb the scene, to have the spell un- 
broken,) the copiousness, the removedness, vitality, 
loose-clear-crowdedness, of that stellar concave spread- 
ing overhead, softly absorb'd into me, rising so free, in- 
terminably high, stretching east, west, north, south — 
and I, though but a point in the center below, embod- 
ying all. 

STRAW-COLOR'D AND OTHER PSYCHES 

Aug. 4. — A pretty sight ! Where I sit in the shade 
— a warm day, the sun shining from cloudless skies, 
the forenoon well advanc'd — I look over a ten-acre 
field of luxuriant clover-hay, (the second crop) — the 
livid-ripe red blossoms and dabs of August brown 
thickly spotting the prevailing dark-green. Over all 
flutter myriads of light-yellow butterflies, mostly skim- 
ming along the surface, dipping and oscillating, giving 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I43 

a curious animation to the scene. The beautiful, spir- 
itual insects ! straw-color'd Psyches ! Occasionally 
one of them leaves his mates, and mounts, perhaps 
spirally, perhaps in a straight line in the air, fluttering 
up, up, till literally out of sight. In the lane as I came 
along just now I noticed one spot, ten feet square or 
so, where more than a hundred had collected, holding 
a revel, a gyration-dance, or butterfly good-time, wind- 
ing and circling, down and across, but always keeping 
within the limits. The little creatures have come out 
all of a sudden the last few days, and are now very 
plentiful. As I sit outdoors, or walk, I hardly look 
around without somewhere seeing two (always two) 
fluttering through the air in amorous dalliance. Then 
their inimitable color, their fragility, peculiar motion 
— and that strange, frequent way of one leaving the 
crowd and mounting up, up in the free ether, and ap- 
parently never returning. As I look over the field, 
these yellow-wings everywhere mildly sparkling, many 
snowy blossoms of the wild carrot gracefully bending 
on their tall and taper stems — while for sounds, the 
distant guttural screech of a flock of guinea-hens 
comes shrilly yet somehow musically to my ears. And 
now a faint growl of heat-thunder in the north — and 
ever the low-rising and falling wind-purr from the tops 
of the maples and willows. 

A NIGHT REMEMBRANCE 

Aiii^. 2^, g-io A. M. — I sit by the edge of the pond, 
everything quiet, the broad, polish'd surface spread 
before me — tlic l)lue of the heavens and the white 
clouds reflected {xo\\\ it — and flittinii^ across, now and 



144 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

then, the reflection of some flying bird. Last night I 
was down here with a friend till after midnight; every- 
thing a miracle of splendor — the glory of the stars, and 
the completely rounded moon — the passing clouds, 
silver and luminous-tawny — now and then masses of 
vapory illuminated scud — and silently by my side my 
dear friend. The shades of the trees, and patches of 
moonlight on the grass — the softly blowing breeze, 
and just-palpable odor of the neighboring ripening 
corn — the indolent and spiritual night, inexpressibly 
rich, tender, suggestive — something altogether to filter 
through one's soul, and nourish and feed and soothe 
the memory long afterwards. 

DELAWARE RIVER— DAYS AND NIGHTS 

April ^, iSyg. — With the return of spring to the skies, 
airs, waters of the Delaware, return the sea-gulls. I 
never tire of watching their broad and easy flight, in 
spirals, or as they oscillate with slow unflapping wings, 
or look down with curved beak, or dipping to the water 
after food. The crows, plenty enough all through 
the winter, have vanish'd with the ice. Not one of 
them now to be seen. The steamboats have again 
come forth — bustling up, handsome, freshly painted, 
for summer work — the Columbia, the Edwin Forrest, 
(the Republic not yet out,) the Reybold, the Nelly 
White, the Twilight, the Ariel, the Warner, the Perry, 
the Taggart, the Jersey Blue — even the bulky old 
Trenton — not forgetting those saucy little bull-pups of 
the current, the steamtugs. 

But let me bunch and catalogue the affair — the river 
itself, all the way from the sea — Cape Island on one 



AUTOBIOCxRAPHIA I45 

side and Henlopen light on the other — up the broad 
bay north, and so to Philadelphia, and on further to 
Trenton; — the sights I am most familiar with, (as I 
live a good part of the time in Camden, I view matters 
from that outlook) — the great arrogant, black, full- 
freighted ocean steamers, inward or outward bound — 
the ample width here between the two cities, inter- 
sected by Windmill island — an occasional man-of-war, 
sometimes a foreigner, at anchor, with her guns and 
port-holes, and the boats, and the brown-faced sailors, 
and the regular oar-strokes, and the gay crowds of 
"visiting day" — the frequent large and handsome 
three-masted schooners, (a favorite style of marine 
build, hereabout of late years,) some of them new and 
very jaunty, with their white-gray sails and yellow pine 
spars — the sloops dashing along in a fair wind — (I see 
one now, coming up, under broad canvas, her gaff- 
topsail shining in the sun, high and picturesque — what 
a thing of beauty amid the sky and waters!) — the 
crowded wharf-slips along the city — the flags of differ- 
ent nationalities, the sturdy English cross on its ground 
of blood, the French tricolor, the banner of the great 
North German empire, and the Italian and the Spanish 
colors — sometimes, of an afternoon, the whole scene 
enliven 'd by a fleet of yachts, in a half calm, lazily re- 
turning from a race down at Gloucester; — the neat, 
rakish, revenue steamer " Hamilton " in mid-stream, 
with her perpendicular stripes flaunting aft — and, turn- 
ing the eyes north, the long ribands of fleecy-white 
steam, or dingy-black smoke, stretching far, fan- 
shaped, slanting diagonally across from the Kensington 
or Richmond shores, in the west-by-south-west wind. 



146 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

SCENES ON FERRY AND RIVER— LAST WINTER'S 
NIGHTS 

Then the Camden ferry. What exhilaration, change, 
people, business, by day. What soothing, silent, won- 
drous hours, at night, crossing on the boat, most all to 
myself — pacing the deck, alone, forward or aft. What 
communion with the waters, the air, the exquisite 
chiaroscuro — the sky and stars, that speak no word, 
nothing to the intellect, yet so eloquent, so communi- 
cative to the soul. And the ferry men — little they 
know how much they have been to me, day and night 
— how many spells of listlessness, ennui, debility, they 
and their hardy w^ays have dispell'd. And the pilots — 
captains Hand, Walton, and Giberson by day, and 
captain Olive at night; Eugene Crosby, with his strong 
young arm so often supporting, circling, convoying me 
over the gaps of the bridge, through impediments, 
safely aboard. Indeed, all my ferry friends — captain 
Frazee the superintendent, Lindell, Hiskey, Fred 
Ranch, Price, Watson, and a dozen more. And the 
ferry itself, with its queer scenes — sometimes children 
suddenly born in the waiting-houses (an actual fact — 
and more than once) — sometimes a masquerade party, 
going over at night, with a band of music, dancing 
and whirling like mad on the broad deck, in their fan- 
tastic dresses; sometimes the astronomer, Mr. Whitall, 
(who posts me up in points about the stars by a living 
lesson there and then, and answering every question) 
— sometimes a prolific family group, eight, nine, ten, 
even twelve ! (Yesterday, as I cross'd, a mother, father, 
and eight children, waiting in the ferry-house, bound 
westward somewhere.) 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I47 

I have mention'd the crows. I always watch them 
from the boats. They play quite a part in the winter 
scenes on the river, by day. Their black splatches are 
seen in relief against the snow and ice everywhere at 
that season — sometimes flying and flapping — some- 
times on little or larger cakes, sailing up or down the 
stream. One day the river was mostly clear— only a 
single long ridge of broken ice making a narrow stripe 
by itself, running along down the current for over a 
mile, quite rapidly. On this white stripe the crows 
were congregated, hundreds of them — a funny proces- 
sion — (''half mourning" was the comment of some 
one.) 

Then the reception room, for passengers waiting — 
life illustrated thoroughly. Take a March picture I 
jotted there two or three weeks since. Afternoon, 
about 2>}2 o'clock, it begins to snow. There has been 
a matinee performance at the theater — from 4X to 5 
comes a stream of homeward bound ladies. I never 
knew the spacious room to present a gayer, more lively 
scene — handsome, well-drest Jersey women and girls, 
scores of them, streaming in for nearly an hour — the 
bright eyes and glowing faces, coming in from the air — 
a sprinkling of snow on bonnets or dresses as they enter 
— the five or ten minutes' waiting — the chatting and 
laughing — (women can have capital times among them- 
selves, with plenty of wit, lunches, jovial abandon) — 
Lizzie, the plcasant-niaiuutr'd waiting-room woman — 
for sound, the bc*ll-taps and steam-signals of the de- 
j)arting boats with their rhythmic break and undertone 
— the domestic pictures, mothers with bevies of daugh- 
ters, (a charming sightj — children, countrymen — the 



148 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

railroad men in their blue clothes and caps — all the 
various characters of city and country represented or 
suggested. Then outside some belated passenger 
frantically running, jumping after the boat. Towards 
6 o'clock the human stream gradually thickening — 
now a pressure of vehicles, drays, piled railroad crates 
— now a drove of cattle, making quite an excitement, 
the drovers with heavy sticks, belaboring the steaming 
sides of the frighten'd brutes. Inside the reception 
room, business bargains, flirting, love-m.aking, eclair- 
cisse77ients, proposals — pleasant, sober-faced Phil com- 
ing in with his burden of afternoon papers — or Jo, or 
Charley (who jump'd in the dock last week, and saved 
a stout lady from drowning,) to replenish the stove, 
after clearing it with long crow-bar poker. 

Besides all this ''comedy human," the river affords 
nutriment of a higher order. Here are 'some of my 
memoranda of the past winter, just as pencill'd down 
on the spot. 

A January Night. — Fine trips across the wide Dela- 
ware to-night. Tide pretty high, and a strong ebb. 
River, a little after 8, full of ice, mostly broken, but 
some large cakes making our strong-timber'd steamboat 
hum and quiver as she strikes them. In the clear 
moonlight they spread, strange, unearthly, silvery, 
faintly glistening, as far as I can see. Bumping, 
trembling, sometimes hissing like a thousand snakes, 
the tide-procession, as we wend with or through it, 
affording a grand undertone, in keeping with the scene. 
Overhead, the splendor indescribable; yet something 
haughty, almost supercilious, in the night. Never did 
I realize more latent sentiment, almost passio7i, in 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I49 

those silent interminable stars up there. One can 
understand, such a night, why, from the days of the 
Pharaohs or Job, the dome of heaven, sprinkled with 
planets, has supplied the subtlest, deepest criticism on 
human pride, glory, ambition. 

A7iother Winter Night. — I don't know anything more 
Jillmg than to be on the wide firm deck of a powerful 
boat, a clear, cool, extra-moonlight night, crushing 
proudly and resistlessly through this thick, marbly, 
glistening ice. The whole river is now spread with 
it — some immense cakes. There is such weirdness 
about the scene — partly the quality of the light, with 
its tinge of blue, the lunar twilight— only the large 
stars holding their own in the radiance of the moon. 
Temperature sharp, comfortable for motion, dry, full of 
oxygen. But the sense of power — the steady, scornful, 
imperious urge of our strong new engine, as she ploughs 
her way through the big and little cakes. 

Night of March 18, 'jg. — One of the calm, pleasant- 
ly cool, exquisitely clear and cloudless, early spring 
nights — the atmosphere again that rare vitreous blue- 
black, welcom'd by astronomers. Just at 8, evening, 
the scene overhead of certainly solemnest beauty, nev- 
er surpass'd. Venus nearly down in the west, of a size 
and lustre as if trying to outshow herself, before depart- 
ing. Teeming, maternal orb — I take you again to my- 
self. I am reminded of that spring preceding Abraham 
Lincoln's murder, when I, restlessly haunting the Po- 
tomac banks, around Washington city, watch'd you, 
off there, aloof, moody as myself: 

As we walk'd up and down in ihe dark blue so mystic. 
As we walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night, 



I 50 AUTOBIOGR APHIA 

As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me 

night after night, 
As you droop from the sky low down, as if to my side, 

(while the other stars all looked on,) 
As we wander'd together the solemn night. 

UP THE HUDSON TO ULSTER COUNTY 

April i»j.— Off to New York on a little tour and vis- 
it. Leaving the hospitable, home-like quarters of my 
valued friends, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Johnston — took the 
4 p. M. boat, bound up the Hudson, 100 miles or so. 
Sunset and evening fine. Especially enjoy'd the hour 
after we passed Cozzens's landing — the night lit by the 
crescent moon and Venus, now swimming in tender 
glory, and now hid by the high rocks and hills of the 
western shore, which we hugg'd close. (Where I spend 
the next ten days is in Ulster county and its neighbor- 
hood, with frequent morning and evening drives, ob- 
servations of the river, and short rambles.) 

April 24. — Noon. — A little more and the sun would be 
oppressive. The bees are out gathering their bread 
from willows and other trees. I watch them returning, 
darting through the air or lighting on the hives, their 
thighs covered with the yellow forage. A solitary rob- 
in sings near. I sit in my shirtsleeves and gaze from 
an open bay-window on the indolent scene — the thin 
haze, the Fishkill hills in the distance — ofif on the river, a 
sloop with slanting mainsail, and two or three little shad- 
boats. Over on the railroad opposite, long freight trains, 
sometimes weighted by cylinder-tanks of petroleum, 
thirty, forty, fifty cars in a string, panting and rumbling 
along in full view, but the sound soften'd by distance. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 151 

AT J. B.'s— TURF-FIRES— SPRING DAY SONGS 

April 26. — At sunrise, the pure clear sound of the 
meadow lark. An hour later, some notes, few and sim- 
ple, yet delicious and perfect, from the bush-sparrow — 
towards noon the reedy trill of the robin. To-day 
is the fairest, sweetest yet — penetrating warmth — a love- 
ly veil in the air, partly heat-vapor and partly from the 
turf-fires everywhere in patches on the farms. A 
group of soft maples near by silently bursts out in crim- 
son tips, buzzing all day with busy bees. The white 
sails of sloops and schooners glide up or down the riv- 
er; and long trains of cars, with ponderous roll, or 
faint bell notes, almost constantly on the opposite 
shore. The earliest wildflowers in the woods and 
fields, spicy arbutus, blue liverwort, frail anemone, and 
the pretty white blossoms of the bloodroot. I launch 
out in slow rambles, discovering them. As I go along 
the roads I like to see the farmers' fires in patches, 
burning the dry brush, turf, debris. How the smoke 
crawls along, flat to the ground, slanting, slowly ris- 
ing, reaching away, and at last dissipating. I like its 
acrid smell — whiffs just reaching me — welcomer than 
French perfume. 

The birds are plenty; of any sort, or of two or three 
sorts, curiously, not a sign, till suddenly some warm, 
gushing, sunny April (or even March) day — lo ! there 
they are, from twig to twig, or fence to fence, flirting, 
singing, some mating, preparing to build. Hut most 
o{\\\^vi\ en passa7it — a fortnight, a UKjnth in these parts, 
and then away. As in all ])hases. Nature keeps up her 
vital, copious, eternal procession. Still, [)lenty of the 



1 52 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

birds hang around all or most of the season — now their 
love -time, and era of nest-building. I find flying over 
the river, crows, gulls and hawks. I hear the afternoon 
shriek of the latter, darting about, preparing to nest. 
The oriole will soon be heard here, and the twanging 
meoeow of the cat-bird; also the king-bird, cuckoo and 
the warblers. All along, there are three peculiarly 
characteristic spring songs — the meadow-lark's, so 
sweet, so alert and remonstrating (as if he said, *' don't 
you see ? " or, '* can't you understand ? ") — the cheery, 
mellow, human tones of the robin — (I have been try- 
ing for years to get a brief term, or phrase, that would 
identify and describe that robin-call) — and the amor- 
ous whistle of the high-hole. Insects are out plenti- 
fully at midday. 

April 2g. — As w^e drove lingering along the road we 
heard, just after sundown, the song of the wood-thrush. 
We stopp'd w^ithout a word, and listen'd long. The 
delicious notes — a sweet, artless, voluntary, simple 
anthem, as from the flute-stops of some organ, w^afted 
through the twilight— echoing well to us from the per- 
pendicular high rock, where, in some thick young trees' 
recesses at the base, sat the bird — fill'd our senses, our 

souls. 

MEETING A HERMIT 

I found in one of my rambles up the hills a real 
hermit, living in a lonesome spot, hard to get at, 
rocky, the view fine, with a little patch of land two 
rods square. A man of youngish middle age, city 
born and raised, had been to school, had travel'd in 
Europe and California. I first met him once or twice 
on the road, and pass'd the time of day, with some 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 53 

small talk; then, the third time, he ask'd me to go 
along a bit and rest in his hut (an almost unprecedent- 
ed compliment, as I heard from others afterwards.) 
He was of Quaker stock, I think; talk'd with ease and 
moderate freedom, but did not unbosom his life, or 
story, or tragedy, or whatever it was. 

WALTER DUMONT AND HIS MEDAL 
As I saunter'd along the high road yesterday, I 
stopp'd to watch a man near by, ploughing a rough 
stony field with a yoke of oxen. Usually there is 
much geeing and hawing, excitement, and continual 
noise and expletives, about a job of this kind. But I 
noticed how different, how easy and wordless, yet 
firm and sufficient, the work of this young ploughman. 
His name was Walter Dumont, a farmer, and son of 
a farmer, working for their living. Three years ago, 
when the steamer ** Sunnyside " was wreck'd of a bit- 
ter icy night on the west bank here, Walter went out 
in his boat — was the first man on hand with assistance 
— made a way through the ice to shore, connected a 
line, perform'd work of first-class readiness, daring, 
danger, and saved numerous lives. Some weeks after, 
one evening when he was up at Esopus, among the 
usual loafing crowd at the country store and post- 
office, there arrived the gift of an unexpected official 
gold medal for the (juiet hero. Tlie im])romptu prc-- 
sentation was made to him on the spot, but lie blush'd. 
hesitated as he took it and had nothing to say. 

TWO CITY AREAS, CERTAIN HOURS 
Nkw York, May 24, 'yg. — l^crhaps no (juarters of 
this city (I have return'd again for awhile,) make more 



1 54 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

brilliant, animated, crowded, spectacular human pre- 
sentations these fine May afternoons than the two I am 
now going to describe from personal observation. 
First: that area comprising Fourteenth street (especially 
the short range between Broadway and Fifth avenue) 
with Union square, its adjacencies, and so retrostretch- 
ing down Broadway for half a mile. All the walks here 
are wide, and the spaces ample and free — now flooded 
with liquid gold from the last two hours of powerful 
sunshine. The whole area at 5 o'clock, the days of my 
observations, must have contain'd from thirty to forty 
thousand finely-dress'd people, all in motion, plenty of 
them good - looking, many beautiful women, often 
youths and children, the latter in groups with their 
nurses — the trottoirs everywhere close-spread, thick- 
tangled, (yet no collision, no trouble,) with masses of 
bright color, action, and tasty toilets; (surely the wom- 
en dress better than ever before, and the men do too.) 
As if New York would show these afternoons what it 
can do in its humanity, its choicest physique and phys- 
iognomy, and its countless prodigality of locomotion, 
dry goods, glitter, magnetism, and happiness. 

Second: also from 5 to 7 P. M. the stretch of Fifth 
avenue, all the way from the Central Park exits at Fif- 
ty-ninth street, down to Fourteenth, especially along 
the high grade by Fortieth street, and down the hill. 
A Mississippi of horses and rich vehicles, not by dozens 
and scores, but hundreds and thousands — the broad 
avenue filled and cramm'd with them — a moving, spark- 
ling, hurrying crush, for more than two miles. (I won- 
der they don't get block'd, but I believe they never do.) 
Altogether it is to me the marvel sight of New York. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 55 

I like to get in one of the Fifth avenue stages and ride 
up, stemming the swift-moving procession. I doubt if 
London or Paris or any city in the world can show such 
a carriage carnival as I have seen here five or six times 
these beautiful May afternoons. 

CENTRAL PARK— A FINE AFTERNOON, 4 TO 6 

Ten thousand vehicles careering through the Park 
this perfect afternoon. Such a show ! and I have seen 
all— watch'd it narrowly, and at my leisure. Private 
barouches, cabs and coupes, some fine horseflesh — lap- 
dogs, footmen, fashions, foreigners, cockades on hats, 
crests on panels — the full oceanic tide of New York's 
wealth and "gentility." It was an impressive, rich, in- 
terminable circus on a grand scale, full of action and 
color in the beauty of the day, under the clear sun 
and moderate breeze. Family groups, couples, single 
drivers — of course dresses generally elegant — much 
"style," (yet perhaps little or nothing, even in that 
direction, that fully justified itself.) Through the win- 
dows of two or three of the richest carriages I saw faces 
almost corpse-like, so ashy and listless. Indeed the 
whole afTair exhibited less of sterling America, either 
in spirit or countenance, than I bad counted on from 
such a select mass-spectacle. 1 suppose, as a proof of 
limitless wealth, leisure, and the aforesaid "gentility," 
it was tremendous. Yet what I saw those hours (I took 
two other occasions, two other afternoons to watch the 
same scene,) confirms a tliought that haunts me every 
additional glimpse I get of our top-loftical general or 
rather exceptional j)hases of wealth and fashion in this 
country — namely, that they are ill at ease, much too 



156 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

conscious, cased in too many cerements, and far from 
happy — that there is nothing in them which we who 
are poor and plain need at all envy, and that instead of 
the perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, 
their typical redolence is of soaps and essences, very 
rare may be, but suggesting the barber shop — some- 
thing that turns stale and musty in a few hours any- 
how. 

Perhaps the show on the horseback road was pretti- 
est. Many groups (threes a favorite number,) some 
couples, some singly— many ladies — frequently horses 
or parties dashing along on a full run — fine riding the 
rule — a few really first-class animals. As the afternoon 
waned, the wheel'd carriages grew less, but the saddle- 
riders seemed to increase. They linger'd long — and I 
saw some charming forms and faces. 

DEPARTING OF THE BIG STEAMERS 

May zj. — A three hours' bay-trip from 12 to 3 this 
afternoon, accompanying ** the City of Brussels " down 
as far as the Narrows, in behoof of some Europe-bound 
friends, to give them a good send off. Our spirited 
little tug, the * * Seth Low, " kept close to the great 
black "Brussels," sometimes one side, sometimes the 
other, always up to her, or even pressing ahead, (like 
the blooded pony accompanying the royal elephant.) 
The whole affair, from the first, was an animated, 
quick-passing, characteristic New York scene; the large, 
good-looking, well-dress'd crowd on the wharf-end — 
men and women come to see their friends depart, and 
bid them God-speed — the ship's sides swarming with 
passengers — groups of bronze-faced sailors, with uni- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 57 

form'd officers at their posts— the quiet directions, as 
she quickly unfastens and moves out, prompt to a min- 
ute — the emotional faces, adieus and fluttering hand- 
kerchiefs, and many smiles and some tears on the 
wharf — the answering faces, smiles, tears and fluttering 
handkerchiefs, from the ship — (what can be subtler and 
finer than this play of faces on such occasions in these 
responding crowds ?— what go more to one's heart ?) — 
the proud, steady, noiseless cleaving of the grand 
oceaner down the bay — we speeding by her side a few 
miles, and then turning, wheeling, amid a babel of wild 
hurrahs, shouted partings, ear-splitting steam whistles, 
kissing of hands and waving of handkerchiefs. 

This departing of the big steamers, noons or after- 
noons — there is no better medicine when one is listless 
or vapory. I am fond of going down Wednesdays and 
Saturdays — their more special days — to watch them and 
the crowds on the wharves, the arriving passengers, the 
general bustle and activity, the eager looks from the 
faces, the clear-toned voices, (a travel'd foreigner, a 
musician, told me the other day, she thinks an Ameri- 
can crowd has the finest voices in the world,) the whole 
look of the great, shapely black ships themselves, and 
their groups and lined sides— in the setting of our bay 
with the blue sky overhead. Two days after the above 
1 saw the "Britannic," the ** Donau," the " Helve- 
tia " and the "Schiedam" steam out, and all off for 
Europe — a magnificent sight. 

MATURE SUMMER DAYS AND NKWITS 

/lui^r^ y, — Eorcnoon — as 1 sit uikIct the willow shade, 
(liave retreated down in the country again J a little 



1 58 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

bird is leisurely dousing and flirting himself amid the 
brook almost within reach of me. He evidently fears 
me not — takes me for some concomitant of the neigh- 
boring earthy banks, free bushery and wild weeds. 
6 p. M. — The last three days have been perfect ones 
for the season, (four nights ago copious rains, with ve- 
hement thunder and lightning.) I write this sitting 
by the creek watching my two kingfishers at their sun- 
down sport. The strong, beautiful, joyous creatures ! 
Their wings glisten in the slanted sunbeams as they 
circle and circle around, occasionally dipping and dash- 
ing the water, and making long stretches up and down 
the creek. Wherever I go over fields, through lanes, 
in by-places, blooms the white -flowering wild-carrot, 
its delicate pat of snow-flakes crowning its slender 
stem, gracefully oscillating in the breeze. 

EXPOSITION BUILDING— NEW CITY HALL 

Philadelphia, Aug. 26. — Last night and to-night 
of unsurpass'd clearness, after two days' rain ; moon 
splendor and star splendor. Being out toward the 
great Exposition building. West Philadelphia, I saw it 
lit up, and thought I would go in. There was a ball, 
democratic but nice ; plenty of young couples waltzing 
and quadrilling — music by a good string-band. To 
the sight and hearing of these — to moderate strolls up 
and down the roomy spaces — to getting off aside, rest- 
ing in an arm-chair and looking up a long while at the 
grand high roof with its graceful and multitudinous 
work of iron rods, angles, gray colors, plays of light 
and shade, receding into dim outlines — to absorbing 
(in the intervals of the string band,) some capital volun- 



AUTOBIOGR APHIA I 59 

taries and rolling caprices from the big organ at the 
other end of the building — to sighting a shadow'd 
figure or group or couple of lovers every now and then 
passing some near or farther aisle — I abandon'd myself 
for over an hour. 

Returning home, riding down Market street in an 
open summer car, something detain'd us between Fif- 
teenth and Broad, and I got out to view better the new, 
three-fifths-built marble edifice, the City Hall, of mag- 
nificent proportions — a majestic and lovely show there 
in the moonlight — flooded all over, facades, myriad 
silver-white lines and carv'd heads and mouldings, with 
the soft dazzle — silent, weird, beautiful — well, I know 
that never when linish'd will that magnificent pile im- 
press one as it impress'd me those fifteen minutes. 

SWALLOWS ON THE RIVER 

Sept. J. — Cloudy and wet, and wind due east ; air 
without palpable fog, but very heavy with moisture 
— welcome for a change. Forenoon, crossing the Dela- 
ware, I noticed unusual numbers of swallows in flight, 
circling, darting, graceful beyond description, close to 
the water. Thick, around the bows of the ferry-boat 
as she lay tied in her slip, they flew ; and as we went 
out I watch'd beyond the pier-heads, and across the 
broad stream, their swift-winding loop-ribands of mo- 
tion, down close to it, cuttiniL; and intersecting. Though 
1 had seen swallows all my life, seem'd as though J 
never before realized their peculiar beauty and charac- 
ter in the landscape. (Some time ago, for an hour, in 
a huge old country barn, watching these birds ilying, 
recall'd the 22d book of the Odyssey, where Ulysses 



l6o AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

slays the suitors, bringing things to eclaircissemeiit, 
and Minerva, swallow-bodied, darts up through the 
spaces of the hall, sits high on a beam, looks com- 
placently on the show of slaughter, and feels in her 
element, exulting, joyous.) 

BEGIN A LONG JAUNT WEST 

The following three or four months (Sept. to Dec. 
'79) I made quite a western journey, fetching up at 
Denver, Colorado, and penetrating the Rocky Moun- 
tain region enough to get a good notion of it all. Left 
West Philadelphia after 9 o'clock one night, middle of 
September, in a comfortable sleeper. Oblivious of the 
two or three hundred miles across Pennsylvania ; at 
Pittsburgh in the morning to breakfast. Pretty good 
view of the city and Birmingham — fog and damp, 
smoke, coke-furnaces, flames, discolor'd wooden 
houses, and vast collections of coal-barges. Presently 
a bit of fine region, W^est Virginia, the Panhandle, and 
crossing the river, the Ohio. By day through the lat- 
ter State — then Indiana — and so rock'd to slumber for 
a second night, flying like lightning through Illinois. 

MISSOURI STATE 

We should have made the run of 960 miles from 
Philadelphia to St. Louis in thirty-six hours, but we 
had a collision and bad locomotive smash about two- 
thirds of the way, which set us back. So merely stop- 
ping over night that time in St. Louis, I sped on west- 
ward. As I cross'd Missouri State the whole distance 
by the St. Louis and Kansas City Northern Railroad, 
a fine early autumn day, I thought my eyes had never 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA l6l 

looked on scenes of greater pastoral beauty. For over 
two hundred miles successive rolling prairies, agricul- 
turally perfect view'd by Pennsylvania and New Jersey 
eyes, and dotted here and there with fine timber. Yet 
fine as the land is, it isn't the finest portion ; (there is 
a bed of impervious clay and hard-pan beneath this 
section that holds water too firmly, " drowns the land 
in wet weather, and bakes it in dry," as a cynical farmer 
told me.) South are some richer tracts, though per- 
haps the beauty-spots of the State are the northwest- 
ern counties. Altogether, I am clear, (now, and from 
what I have seen and learn'd since,) that Missouri, in 
climate, soil, relative situation, wheat, grass, mines, 
railroads and every important materialistic respect, 
stands in the front rank of the Union. Of Missouri 
averaged politically and socially I have heard all sorts 
of talk, some pretty severe — but I should have no fear 
myself of getting along safely and comfortably any- 
where among the Missourians. They raise a good deal 
of tobacco. You see at this time quantities of the light 
greenish-gray leaves pulled and hanging out to dry on 
temporary frameworks or rows of sticks. Looks much 
like the mullein familiar to eastern eyes. 

LAWRENCE AND TOPEKA, KANSAS 

We thought of stopping in Kansas City, but when 
we got there we found a train ready and a crowd of 
hospitable Kansians to take us on to Lawrence, to 
which I proceeded. I shall not soon forget my good 
days in L., in company with Judge Usher and his sons, 
(especially John and Linton,) true westerners of the 
noblest type. Nor the similar days in Topeka. Nor 



l62 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

the brotherly kindness of my RR. friends there, and 
the city and State officials. Lawrence and Topeka 
are large, bustling, half-rural, handsome cities. I took 
two or three long drives about the latter, drawn by a 
spirited team over smooth roads. 

ON TO DENVER— A FRONTIER INCIDENT 

The jaunt of five or six hundred miles from Topeka 
to Denver took me through a variety of country, but 
all unmistakably prolific, western, American, and on 
the largest scale. For a long distance we follow the 
line of the Kansas river, (I like better the old name, 
Kaw,) a stretch of very rich, dark soil, famed for its 
wheat, and call'd the Golden Belt — then plains and 
plains, hour after hour — Ellsworth county, the centre 
of the State — where I must stop a moment to tell a 
characteristic story of early days — scene the very spot 
where I am passing — time 1868. In a scrimmage at 
some public gathering in the town, A. had shot B. 
quite badly, but had not kill'd him. The sober men of 
Ellsworth conferr'd with one another and decided that 
A. deserv'd punishment. As they wished to set a good 
example and establish their reputation the reverse of a 
Lynching town, they open an informal court and bring 
both men before them for deliberate trial. Soon as 
this trial begins the wounded man is led forward to 
give his testimony. Seeing his enemy in durance and 
unarm'd, B. walks suddenly up in a fury and shoots A. 
through the head — shoots him dead. The court is in- 
stantly adjourn'd, and its unanimous members, with- 
out a word of debate, walk the murderer B. out, wound- 
ed as he is, and hano- him. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 163 

In due time we reach Denver, which city I fall in 
love with from the first, and have that feeling con- 
firm'd, the longer I stay there. One of my pleasantest 
days was a jaunt, via Platte canon, to Leadville. 

AN HOUR ON KENOSHA SUMMIT 

Jottings from the Rocky Mountains, mostly pencill'd 
during a day's trip over the South Park RR., return- 
ing from Leadville, and especially the hour we were 
detain'd, (much to my satisfaction,) at Kenosha sum- 
mit. As afternoon advances, novelties, far-reaching 
splendors, accumulate under the bright sun in this 
pure air. But I had better commence with the day. 

The confronting of Platte canon just at dawn, after 
a ten miles' ride in early darkness on the rail from 
Denver — the seasonable stoppage at the entrance of 
the canon, and good breakfast of egg, trout, and nice 
griddle-cakes — then as we travel on, and get well in 
the gorge, all the wonders, beauty, savage power of 
the scene — the wild stream of water, from sources of 
snows, brawling continually in sight one side — the 
dazzling sun, and the morning lights on the rocks — 
such turns and grades in the track, squirming around 
corners, or up and down hills — far glimpses of a hun- 
dred peaks, titanic necklaces, stretching north and 
south — the huge riglitly-namcd Dome-rock— and as we 
dash along, others similar, simple, monolithic, ele- 
phantine. 

AN EGOTISTICAL ''FIND" 

"I have founfl the law of my own ])ocms," was the 
unspoken but more-and-nKn-e decided fcchng that 



V' 



164 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

came to me as I pass'd, hour after hour, amid all this 
grim yet joyous elemental abandon — this plenitude of 
material, entire absence of art, untrammel'd play of 
primitive Nature — the chasm, the gorge, the crystal 
mountain stream, repeated scores, hundreds of miles — 
the broad handling and absolute uncrampedness — the 
fantastic forms, bathed in transparent browns, faint 
reds and grays, towering sometimes a thousand, some- 
times two or three thousand feet high — at their tops 
now and then huge masses pois'd, and mixing with the 
clouds, with only their outlines, hazed in misty lilac, 
visible. ('*In Nature's grandest shows," says an old 
Dutch writer, an ecclesiastic, ''amid the ocean's 
depth, if so might be, or countless worlds rolling above 
at night, a man thinks of them, weighs all, not for 
themselves or the abstract, but with reference to his 
own personality, and how they may affect him or color 
his destinies.") 

NEW SENSES— NEW JOYS 

We follow the stream of amber and bronze brawling 
along its bed, with its frequent cascades and snow- 
white foam. Through the caiion we fly — mountains 
not only each side, but seemingly, till we get near, 
right in front of us— every rood a new view flashing, 
and each flash defying description— on the almost per- 
pendicular sides, clinging pines, cedars, spruces, crim- 
son sumach bushes, spots of wild grass — but domina- 
ting all, those towering rocks, rocks, rocks, bathed in 
delicate vari-colors, with the clear sky of autumn over- 
head. New senses, new joys, seem develop'd. Talk 
as you like, a typical Rocky Mountain caiion, or a lim- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 165 

itless sea-like stretch of the great Kansas or Colorado 
plains, under favoring circumstances, tallies, perhaps 
expresses, certainly awakes, those grandest and subt- 
lest element-emotions in the human soul, that all the 
marble temples and sculptures from Phidias to Thor- 
waldsen — all paintings, poems, reminiscences, or even 
music, probably never can. 

DENVER IMPRESSIONS 

Through the long-lingering half-light of the most 
superb of evenings we return'd to Denver, where I 
staid several days leisurely exploring, receiving impres- 
sions, with which I may as well taper off this memo- 
randum, itemizing what I saw there. The best was 
the men, three-fourths of them large, able, calm, alert, 
American. And cash ! why they create it here. Out 
in the smelting works, (the biggest and most improv'd 
ones, for the precious metals, in the world,) I saw long 
rows of vats, pans, cover'd by bubbling-boiling water, 
and fill'd with pure silver, four or five inches thick, 
many thousand dollars' worth in a pan. The foreman 
who was showing me shovel'd it carelessly up with a 
little wooden shovel, as one might toss beans. Then 
large silver bricks, worth §2,000 a brick, dozens of 
piles, twenty in a pile. In one place in the mountains, 
at a mining camp, I had a few days before seen rough 
bullion on the ground in the open air, like the confec- 
tioner's pyramids at some swell dinner in New York. 
(Such a sweet morsel to roll over with a poor author's 
pen and ink — and apj)r()priate to slip in here — that the 
silver product of Colorado and Utah, with the gold 
product of California, New Mexico, Nevada and Da- 



l66 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

kota, foots up an addition to the world's coin of con- 
siderably over a hundred millions every year.) 

A city, this Denver, well-laid out — Laramie street, 
and 15th and i6th and Champa streets, with others, 
particularly fine — some with tall storehouses of stone 
or iron, and windows of plate-glass — all the streets 
with little canals of mountain water running along the 
sides — plenty of people, ** business," modernness — yet 
not without a certain racy wild smack, all its own. A 
place of fast horses, (many mares with their colts,) and 
I saw lots of big greyhounds for antelope hunting. 
Now and then groups of miners, some just come in, 
some starting out, very picturesque. 

I TURN SOUTH— AND THEN EAST AGAIN 

Leave Denver at 8 a. m. by the Rio Grande RR. go- 
ing south. Mountains constantly in sight in the ap- 
parently near distance, veil'd slightly, but still clear 
and very grand — their cones, colors, sides, distinct 
against the sky — hundreds, it seem'd thousands, inter- 
minable necklaces of them, their tops and slopes hazed 
more or less slightly in that blue-gray, under the au- 
tumn sun, for over a hundred miles — the most spiritual 
show of objective Nature I ever beheld, or ever 
thought possible. Occasionally the light strengthens, 
making a contrast of yellow-tinged silver on one side, 
with dark and shaded gray on the other. I took a 
long look at Pike's peak, and was a little disappointed. 
(I suppose I had expected something stunning.) Our 
view over plains to the left stretches amply, with cor- 
rals here and there, the frequent cactus and wild sage, 
and herds of cattle feeding. Thus about 120 miles to 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 167 

Pueblo. At that town we board the comfortable and 
well-equipt Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe RR., now 
striking east. 

THE ARKANSAS RIVER 

The Arkansas river plays quite a part in the whole 
of this region — I see it, or its high-cut rocky northern 
shore, for miles, and cross and recross it frequently, as 
it winds and squirms like a snake. The plains vary 
here even more than usual — sometimes a long sterile 
stretch of scores of miles — then green, fertile and 
grassy, an equal length. Some very large herds of 
sheep. (One wants new words in writing about these 
plains, and all the inland American West — the terms, 
far, large, vast, &c., are insufficient.) 

A SILENT LITTLE FOLLOWER— THE COREOPSIS 

Here I must say a word about a little follower, pres- 
ent even now before my eyes, I have been accom- 
panied on my whole journey from Barnegat to Pike's 
Peak by a pleasant floricultural friend, or rather mil- 
lions of friends — nothing more or less than a hardy 
little yellow five-petal'd September and October wild- 
flower, growing I think everywhere in the middle and 
northern United States. I had seen it on the Hudson 
and over Long Island, and along the banks of the Del- 
aware and through New Jersey, (as years ago up the 
Connecticut, and one fall by Lake Champlain.) This 
trip it follow'd me regularly, with its slender stem and 
eyes of gold, from Cape May to the Kaw valley, and so 
through the canons and to tliese plains. In Missouri 1 
saw immense fu;lds all bright with it. Toward western 



l68 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

Illinois I woke up one morning in the sleeper and the 
first thing when I drew the curtain of my berth and 
look'd out was its pretty countenance and bending 
neck. 

Sept. 2^th. — Early morning — still going east after 
we leave Sterling, Kansas, where I stopp'd a day and 
night. The sun up about half an hour; nothing can 
be fresher or more beautiful than this time, this region. 
I see quite a field of my yellow flower in bloom. At 
intervals dots of nice two-story houses, as we ride 
swiftly by. Over the immense area, flat as a floor, vis- 
ible for twenty miles in every direction in the clear air, 
a prevalence of autumn-drab and reddish-tawny herb- 
age — sparse stacks of hay and enclosures, breaking 
the landscape — as we rumble by, flocks of prairie-hens 
starting up. Between Sterling and Florence a fine 
country. (Remembrances to E. L., my old-young sol- 
dier friend of war times, and his wife and boy at S.) 

THE SPANISH PEAKS— EVENING ON THE PLAINS 

Between Pueblo and Bent's fort, southward, in a 
clear afternoon sun-spell I catch exceptionally good 
glimpses of the Spanish peaks. We are on south- 
eastern Colorado — pass immense herds of cattle as our 
first-class locomotive rushes us along — two or three 
times crossing the Arkansas, which we follow many 
miles, and of which river I get fine views, sometimes 
for quite a distance, its stony, upright, not very high, 
palisade banks, and then its muddy flats. We pass 
Fort Lyon — lots of adobie houses — limitless pasturage, 
appropriately fleck'd with those herds of cattle — in due 
time the declining sun in the west — a sky of limpid 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 169 

pearl over all — and so evening on the great plains. A 
calm, pensive, boundless landscape — the perpendicular 
rocks of the north Arkansas, hued in twilight — a thin 
line of violet on the southwestern horizon — the palpable 
coolness and slight aroma — a belated cow-boy with 
some unruly member of his herd — an emigrant wagon 
toiling yet a little further, the horses slow and tired — 
two men, apparently father and son, jogging along on 
foot — and around all the indescribable chiaroscuro and 
sentiment, (profounder than anything at sea,) athwart 
these endless wilds. 

AMERICA'S CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE 

Speaking generally as to the capacity and sure future 
destiny of that plain and prairie area (larger than any 
European kingdom) it is the inexhaustible land of 
wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal, iron, beef and pork, 
butter and cheese, apples and grapes — land of ten 
million virgin farms— to the eye at present wild and 
unproductive— yet experts say that upon it when ir- 
rigated may easily be grown enough wheat to feed the 
world. Then as to scenery (giving my own thought 
and feeling,) while I know the standard claim is that 
Yosemite, Niagara falls, the upper Yellowstone and the 
like, afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so 
sure but the Prairies and Plains, while less stunning 
at first sight, last Uniger, fill the esthetic sense fuller, 
precede all the rest, and make North America's char- 
acteristic landsca[)e. 

Indeed tliroui^ii the whole of this journey, with all 
its shows and varieties, what most impress'd me, and 
will longest remain with me, are these same prairies. 



I/O AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

Day after day, and night after night, to my eyes, to all 
my senses — the esthetic one most of all — they silently 
and broadly unfolded. Even their simplest statistics 
are sublime. 

EARTH'S MOST IMPORTANT STREAM 

The valley of the Mississippi river and its tributaries, 
(this stream and its adjuncts involve a big part of the 
question,) comprehends more than twelve hundred 
thousand square miles, the greater part prairies. It is 
by far the most important stream on the globe, and 
would seem to have been marked out by design, slow- 
flowing from north to south, through a dozen climates, 
all fitted for man's healthy occupancy, its outlet un- 
frozen all the year, and its line forming a safe, cheap 
continental avenue for commerce and passage from 
the north temperate to the torrid zone. Not even the 
mighty Amazon (though larger in volume) on its line 
of east and west — not the Nile in Africa, nor the Dan- 
ube in Europe, nor the three great rivers of China, 
compare with it. Only the Mediterranean sea has 
play'd some such part in history, and all through the 
past, as the Mississippi is destined to play in the future. 
By its demesnes, water'd and welded by its branches, the 
Missouri, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red, the Yazoo, 
the St. Francis and others, it already compacts twenty- 
five millions of people, not merely the most peaceful 
and money-making, but the most restless and warlike 
on earth. Its valley, or reach, is rapidly concentrat- 
ing the political power of the American Union. One 
almost thinks it is the Union— or soon will be. Take 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I/I 

it out, with its radiations, and what would be left? 
From the car windows through Indiana, Illinois, Mis- 
souri, or stopping some days along the Topeka and 
Santa Feroad, in southern Kansas, and indeed wherev- 
er I went, hundreds and thousands of miles through 
this region, my eyes feasted on primitive and rich 
meadows, some of them partially inhabited, but far, 
immensely far more untouch'd, unbroken — and much 
of it more lov^ely and fertile in its unplough'd innocence 
than the fair and valuable fields of New York's, Penn- 
sylvania's, Maryland's or Virginia's richest farms. 

THE WOMEN OF THE WEST 

Ka7isas City . — I am not so well satisfied with what 
I see of the women of the prairie cities. I am writing 
this where I sit leisurely in a store in Main street, Kan- 
sas city, a streaming crowd on the sidewalks flowing 
by. The ladies (and the same in Denver) are all fash- 
ionably drest, and have the look of ''gentility" in face, 
manner and action, but they do not have, either in 
physique or the mentality appropriate to them, any 
high native originality of spirit or body, (as the men 
certainly have, appropriate to them.) They are " in- 
tellectual "and fashionable, but dyspeptic-looking and 
generally doll-Hke; their ambition evidently is to copy 
their eastern sisters. Something far different and in 
advance must appear, to tally and complete the superb 
masculinity of the West, and maintain and continue it. 

From Kansas city I went on to St. Louis, where I re- 
main'd nearly three months, with my brother T. J. W., 
and my dear nieces. 



1/2 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

ST. LOUIS MEMORANDA 

Oct,/N'ov., a7id Dec, 'yg. — The points of St. Louis 
are its position, its absolute wealth, (the long accumu- 
lations of time and trade, solid riches, probably a high- 
er average thereof than any city,) the unrivall'd ampli- 
tude of its well-laid out environage of broad plateaus, 
for future expansion — and the great State of which it 
is the head. It fuses northern and southern qualities, 
perhaps native and foreign ones, to perfection, rendez- 
vous the whole stretch of the Mississippi and Missouri 
rivers, and its American electricity goes well with its 
German phlegm. Fourth, Fifth and Third streets are 
store-streets, showy, modern, metropolitan, with hur- 
rying crowds, vehicles, horse-cars, hubbub, plenty of 
people, rich goods, plate-glass windows, iron fronts 
often five or six stories high. You can purchase any- 
thing in St. Louis (in most of the big western cities for 
the matter of that) just as readily and cheaply as in the 
Atlantic marts. Often in going about the town you 
see reminders of old, even decay'd civilization. The 
water of the west, in some places, is not good, but 
they make it up here by plenty of very fair wine, and 
inexhaustible quantities of the best beer in the 
world. There are immense estabhshments for slaugh- 
tering beef and pork — and I saw flocks of sheep, 
5,000 in a flock. (In Kansas city I had visited a pack- 
ing establishment that kills and packs an average of 
2,500 hogs a day the whole year round, for export. 
Another in Atchison, Kansas, same extent; others 
nearly equal elsewhere. And just as big ones here.) 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1/3 

NIGHTS ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Oct. 2gtJi, jot/i, and J I St. — Wonderfully fine, with the 
full harvest moon, dazzling and silvery. I have haunted 
the river every night lately, where I could get a look at 
the bridge by moonlight. It is indeed a structure of 
perfection and beauty unsurpassable, and I never tire of 
It. The river at present is very low; I noticed to-day 
it had much more of a blue-clear look than usual. I 
hear the slight ripples, the air is fresh and cool, and 
the view, up or down, wonderfully clear, in the moon- 
light. I am out pretty late: it is so fascinating, dreamy. 
The cool night-air, all the influences, the silence, with 
those far-off eternal stars, do me good. I have been 
quite ill of late. And so, well-near the centre of our 
national demesne, these night views of the Mississippi. 

UPON OUR OVv^N LAND 

" Always, after supper, take a walk half a mile long," 
says an old proverb, dryly adding, **and if convenient 
let it be upon your own land." I wonder does any 
other nation but ours afford opportunity for such a 
jaunt as this? Indeed has any previous period af- 
forded it? No one I discover, begins to know the real 
geographic, democratic, indissoluble American Union 
in the present, or suspect it in the future, until he ex- 
plores these Central States, and dwells awhile observ- 
antly on their prairies, or amid their busy towns, and 
the mighty father of waters. A ride of two or three 
thousand miles, "on one's own land," with hardly a 
disconnection, could certainly be had in* no other place 
than the United vStates, and at no period ])cf()re this. 



174 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

If you want to see what the railroad is, and how civil- 
ization and progress date from it — how it is the con- 
queror of crude nature, which it turns to man's use, 
both on small scales and on the largest — come hither 
to inland America. 

I return'd home, east, Jan. 5, 1880, having travers'd, 
to and fro and across, 10,000 miles and more. I soon 
resumed my seclusions down in the woods, or by the 
creek, or gaddings about cities. 

BEETHOVEN'S SEPTETTE 

Feb, II, '80. — At a good concert to-night in the foyer 
of the opera house, Philadelphia — the band a small but 
first-rate one. Never did music more sink into and 
soothe and fill me — never so prove its soul-rousing 
power, its impossibility of statement. Especially in the 
rendering of one of Beethoven's master septettes by 
the well-chosen and perfectly-combined instruments 
(violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello and contrabass,) 
was I carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders. 
Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a 
hillside in the sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, 
as of winds; a horn sounding through the tangle of the 
forest, and the dying echoes ; soothing floating of 
waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing, 
muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, for inter- 
stices; now and then weird, as Nature herself is in cer- 
tain moods — but mainly spontaneous, easy, careless — 
often the sentiment of the postures of naked children 
playing or sleeping. It did me good even to watch the 
violinists drawing their bows so masterly — every motion 
a study. I allow'd myself, as I sometimes do, to wan- 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I75 

der out of myself. The conceit came to me of a copi- 
ous grove of singing birds, and in their midst a simple 
harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting 
their own pensiveness, joyousness. 

A HINT OF WILD NATURE 
Feb. ij.—As I was crossing the Delaware to-day 
saw a large flock of wild geese, right overhead, not 
very high up, ranged in V-shape, in relief against the 
noon clouds of light smoke-color. Had a capital 
though momentary view of them, and then of their 
course on and on southeast, till gradually fading— (my 
eyesight yet first rate for the open air and its distances, 
but I use glasses for reading.) Queer thoughts melted 
mto me the two or three minutes, or less, seeing these 
creatures cleaving the sky— the spacious, airy realm- 
even the prevailing smoke-gray color everywhere, (no 
sun shining)— the waters below— the rapid flight of the 
birds, appearing just for a minute— flashing to me such 
a hint of the whole spread of Nature, with her eternal 
unsophisticated freshness, her never-visited recesses of 
sea, sky, shore— and then disappearing in the distance. 
LOAFING IN THE WOODS 
Marc/i S.~l write this down in the country ao-ain 
but in a new spot, seated on a log in the woods, warm' 
sunny, midday. Have been loaflng here deep amon<^ 
the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak. hickory, with a thick 
undergrowth of laurels and grapevines-the ground 
cover'd everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, 
moss— everything solitary, ancient, grim. Paths (siPch 
as they are) leading hither and yon— (how made I know 



176 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor 
cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind 
through the pine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse 
sighing above (and to the stillness) long and long, 
varied by aimless rambles in the old roads and paths, 
and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my 
joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow- 
larks begin to appear. 

Next day, gth. — A snowstorm in the morning, and 
continuing most of the day. But I took a walk over 
two hours, the same woods and paths, amid the falling 
flakes. No wind, yet the musical low murmur through 
the pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, 
now still'd, now pouring again. All the senses, sight, 
sound, smell, delicately gratified. Every snowflake lay 
where it fell on the evergreens, holly-trees, laurels, &c., 
the multitudinous leaves and branches piled, bulging- 
white, defined by edge-lines of emerald — the tall straight 
columns of the plentiful bronze-topt pines — a slight 
resinous odor blending with that of the snow. (For 
there is a scent to everything, even the snow, if you 
can only detect it — no two places, hardly any two 
hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the 
odor of noon from midnight, or winter from summer, 
or a windy spell from a still one.) 

A CONTRALTO VOICE 

May g, Simday. — Visit this evening to my friends 
the J.'s — good supper, to which I did justice — lively 
chat with Mrs. J. and I. and J. As I sat out front on 
the walk afterward, in the evening air, the church-choir 
and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther's hymn. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 77 

Emfeste berg, very finely. The air was borne by a rich 
contralto. For nearly half an hour there in the dark, 
(there was a good string of English stanzas,) came the 
music, firm and unhurried, with long pauses. The full 
silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over the church's 
dim roof-ridge. Vari-color'd lights from the stain'd 
glass windows broke through the tree-shadows. And 
under all— under the Northern Crown up there, and in 
the fresh breeze below, and the chiaroscuro of the night, 
that liquid-full contralto. 

SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE 

June 4, 'So. — For really seizing a great picture or 
book, or piece of music, or architecture, or grand 
scenery— or perhaps for the first time even the common 
sunshine, or landscape, or may-be even the mystery of 
identity, most curious m3^stery of all— there comes some 
lucky five minutes of a man's life, set amid a fortuitous 
concurrence of circumstances, and bringing in a brief 
flash the culmination of years of reading and travel and 
thought. The present case about two o'clock this 
afternoon, gave me Niagara, its superb severity of action 
and color and majestic grouping, in one short, inde- 
scribable siiow. We were very slowly crossing the Sus- 
pension bridge— not a full stop anywhere, but next to 
it— the day clear, sunny, still— and I out on the plat- 
form. The falls were in ])lain view about a mile off, 
i)ut very distinct, and no n^ar — hardly a murmur. The 
river tumbling green and white, far below me; the dark 
high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze cedars, 
in sliadow; and temp(!ring and arciiing all the immense 
materiahty, a clear sky overhead, with a few while 



178 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

clouds, limpid, spiritual, silent. Brief, and as quiet as 
brief, that picture — a remembrance always afterwards. 
Such are the things, indeed, I lay away with my life's 
rare and blessed bits of hours, reminiscent, past — the 
wild sea-storm I once saw one winter day, off Fire island 
— the elder Booth in Richard, that famous night forty 
years ago in the old Bowery — or Alboni in the chil- 
dren's scene in " Norma " — or night-views, I remember, 
on the field, after battles in Virginia — or the peculiar 
sentiment of moonlight and stars over the great Plains, 
western Kansas — or scooting up New York bay, with a 
stiff breeze and a good yacht, off Navesink. With these, 
I say, I henceforth place that view, that afternoon, 
that combination complete, that five minutes' perfect 
absorption of Niagara — not the great majestic gem 
alone by itself, but set complete in all its varied, full, 
indispensable surroundings. 

JAUNTING TO CANADA 

To go back a little, I left Philadelphia, 9th and 
Green streets, at 8 o'clock, p. M., June 3, on a first- 
class sleeper, by the Lehigh Valley (North Pennsyl- 
vania) route, through Bethlehem, Wilkesbarre,Waverly, 
and so (by Erie) on through Corning to Hornellsville, 
where we arrived at 8, morning, and had a bounteous 
breakfast. I must say I never put in such a good night 
on any railroad track — smooth, firm, the minimum of 
jolting, and all the .swiftness compatible with safety. 
So without change to Buffalo, and thence to Clifton, 
where we arrived early afternoon; then on to London, 
Ontario, Canada, in four more— less than twenty-two 
hours altogether. I am domiciled at the hospitable 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 179 

house of my friends Dr. and Mrs. Bucke, in the ample 
and charming garden and lawns of the asylum. 

SUNDAY WITH THE INSANE 

Jtme 6. — Went over to the religious services (Episco- 
pal) main Insane asylum, held in a lofty, good-sized 
hall, third story. Plain boards, whitewash, plenty of 
cheap chairs, no ornament or color, yet all scrupulously 
clean and sweet. Some three hundred persons present, 
mostly patients. Everything, the prayers, a short ser- 
mon, the firm, orotund voice of the minister, and most 
of all, beyond any portraying or suggesting, that audi- 
ence, deeply impress'd me. I was furnish'd with an 
arm-chair near the pulpit, and sat facing the motley, 
yet perfectly well-behaved and orderly congregation. 
The quaint dresses and bonnets of some of the women, 
several very old and gray, here and there like the heads 
in old pictures. O the looks that came from those 
faces ! There were two or three I shall probably never 
forget. Nothing at all markedly repulsive or hideous 
— strange enough I did not see one such. Our com- 
mon humanity, mine and yours, everywhere: 

"The same old blood — the same red, running blood;" 
yet behind most, an inferr'd arricre of such storms, 
such wrecks, such mysteries, fires, lov^e, wrong, greed 
for wealth, religious problems, crosses — mirror'd from 
those crazed faces (yet now temporarily so calm, like 
still waters,) all the woes and sad happenings of life 
and death — now from everyone the devotional element 
radiating— was it not, indeed, f/ic peace of (uxf tliat 
passcf/i all u)idc7'sta)ii{i)i!r, strange as it may sound? I 
can only say that I took Icjng and searching eye-sweeps 



1 80 AUTOBIOGR APHI A 

as I sat there, and it seem'd so, rousing unprecedented 
thoughts, problems unanswerable. A very fair choir, 
and melodeon accompaniment. They sang " Lead, 
kindly light," after the sermon. Many join'd in the 
beautiful hymn, to which the minister read the intro- 
ductory text, ** III the daytime also He led tJie7n with a 
cloudy and all the night with a light of fire,'' Then the 
words: 

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, 
Lead thou me on. 

The night is dark, and I am far from home; 
Lead thou me on. 

Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see 

The distant scene; one step enough for me. 

I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that thou 

Should'st lead me on; 
I lov'd to choose and see my path; but now 

Lead thou me on. 
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears " 
Pride ruled my will; remember not past years. 

A couple of days after, I went to the ''Refractory 
building," under special charge of Dr. Beemer, and 
through the wards pretty thoroughly, both the men's 
and women's. I have since made many other visits of 
the kind through the asylum, and around among the 
detach'd cottages. As far as I could see, this is among 
the most advanced, perfected, and kindly and ration- 
ally carried on, of all its kind in America. It is a town in 
itself, with many buildings and a thousand inhabitants. 

I learn that Canada, and especially this ample and 
populous province, Ontario, has the very best and 
plentiest benevolent institutions in all departments. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA l8l 

A WEEK'S VISIT TO BOSTON 
May 7, 'c?7. — Seems as if all the ways and means of 
American travel to-day had been settled, not only with 
reference to speed and directness, but for the comfort 
of women, children, invalids, and old fellows like me. 
I went on by a through train that runs daily from 
Washington to the Yankee metropolis without change. 
You get in a sleeping-car soon after dark in Philadel- 
phia, and after ruminating an hour or two, have your 
bed made up if you like, draw the curtains, and go to 
sleep in it — fly on through Jersey to New York— hear 
in your half-slumbers a dull jolting and bumping sound 
or two — are unconsciously toted from Jersey city by a 
midnight steamer around the Battery and under the 
big bridge to the track of the New Haven road — re- 
sume your flight eastward, and early the next morning 
you wake up in Boston. All of which was my experi- 
ence. I wanted to go to the Revere house. A tall un- 
known gentleman, (a fellow-passenger on his way to 
Newport he told me, I had just chatted a few moments 
before with him,) assisted me out through the depot 
crowd, procured a hack, put me in it with my traveling 
bag, saying smilingly and quietly, " Now I want you 
to let this be ;//j/ ride," paid the driver, and before I 
could remonstrate bow'd himself off. 

The occasion of my jaunt, I suppose I had better say 
here, was for a public reading of *' the death of Abra- 
ham Lincoln " essay,* on the sixteenth anniversary of 

* This lecture was read by Mr. Whitman for a number of years successive- 
ly on the same anniversary, sometimes before a few friends, sometimes in pub- 
lic. Besides the occasion here noted, it was delivered before large audiences 
at New York in 1879 ^^d 1887, and at Philadelphia in 1880 and 1890. — A. S. 



1 82 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

that tragedy; which reading duly came off, night of 
April 15. Then I linger'd a week in Boston — felt pret- 
ty well (the mood propitious, my paralysis lull'd)^ 
went around everywhere, and saw all that was to be 
seen, especially human beings. Boston's immense 
material growth — -commerce, finance, commission 
stores, the plethora of goods, the crowded streets and 
sidewalks — made of course the first surprising show. 
In my trip out West, last year, I thought the wand of 
future prosperity, future empire, must soon surely be 
wielded by St. Louis, Chicago, beautiful Denver, per- 
haps San Francisco; but I see the said wand stretch'd 
out just as decidedly m Boston, with just as much cer- 
tainty of staying; evidences of copious capital — indeed 
no centre of the New World ahead of it, (half the big 
railroads in the West are built with Yankees' money, 
and they take the dividends.) Old Boston with its 
zigzag streets and multitudinous angles, (crush up a 
sheet of letter-paper in your hand, throw it down, 
stamp it fiat, and that is a map of old Boston) — new 
Boston with its miles upon miles of large and costly 
houses — Beacon street. Commonwealth avenue, and a 
hundred others. But the best new departures and ex- 
pansions of Boston, and of all the cities of New Eng- 
land, are in another direction. 

THE BOSTON OF TO-DAY 

In the letters we get from Dr. Schliemann (interest- 
ing but fishy) about his excavations there in the far-off 
Homeric area, I notice cities, ruins, &c., as he digs 
them out of their graves, are certain to be in layers — 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 83 

that is to say, upon the foundation of an old concern, 
very far down indeed, is always another city or set of 
ruins, and upon that another superadded — and some- 
times upon that still another — each representing 
either a long or rapid stage of growth and develop- 
ment, different from its predecessor, but unerringly 
growing out of and resting on it. In the moral, emo- 
tional, heroic, and human growths, (the main of a race 
in my opinion,) something of this kind has certainly 
taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis 
of to-day may be described as sunny, (there is some- 
thing else that makes warmth, mastering even winds 
and meteorologies, though those are not to be sneez'd 
at,) joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, a certain 
element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to 
be fool'd ; fond of good eating and drinking — costly in 
costume as its purse can buy; and all through its best 
average of houses, streets, people, that subtle some- 
thing (generally thought to be climate, but it is not 
— it is something indefinable in the race, the turn of 
its development) which effuses behind the whirl of 
animation, study, business, a happy and joyous public 
spirit, as distinguish'd from a sluggish and saturnine 
one. Makes me think of the glints we get (as in 
Symonds's books) of the jolly old Greek cities. Indeed 
there is a good deal of the Hellenic in B., and the 
people are getting handsomer too — padded out, with 
freer motions, and with color in their faces. I never 
saw (although this is not Greek) so vc\'AX\y foic-lookuig 
gray haiYd luojiieii. At my lecture I caught myself 
pausing more tlian once to look at them, plentiful 
everywhere through the audience — healthy and wifely 



184 AUTOBTOGRAPHIA 

and motherly, and wonderfully charming and beauti- 
ful — I think such as no time or land but ours could 
show. 

MY TRIBUTE TO FOUR POETS 

April 16. — A short but pleasant visit to Longfellow. 
I am not one of the calling kind, but as the author of 
** Evangeline " kindly took the trouble to come and see 
me three years ago in Camden, where I was ill, I felt 
not only the impulse of my own pleasure on that oc- 
casion, but a duty. He was the only particular emi- 
nence I called on in Boston, and I shall not soon 
forget his lit-up face and glowing warmth and cour- 
tesy, in the modes of what is called the old school. 

And now just here I feel the impulse to interpolate 
something about the mighty four who stamp this first 
American century with its birth-marks of poetic litera- 
ture. In a late magazine one of my reviewers, who 
ought to know better, speaks of my '' attitude of con- 
tempt and scorn and intolerance " toward the leading 
poets — of my ''deriding" them, and preaching their 
"uselessness." If anybody cares to know what I think 
— and have long thought and avow'd — about them, I 
am entirely willing to propound. I can't imagine any 
better luck befalling these States for a poetical begin- 
ning and initiation than has come from Emerson, 
Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. Emerson, to me, 
stands unmistakably at the head, but for the others I 
am at a loss where to give any precedence. Each illus- 
trious, each rounded, each distinctive. Emerson for 
his sweet, vital-tasting melody, rhym'd philosophy, 
and poems as amber-clear as the honey of the wild bee 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 85 

he loves to sing. Longfellow for rich color, graceful 
forms and incidents— all that makes life beautiful and 
love refined — competing with the singers of Europe on 
their own ground, and, with one exception, better and 
finer work than that of any of them. Bryant pulsing 
the first interior verse-throbs of a mighty world — bard 
of the river and the wood, ever conveying a taste of 
open air, with scents as from hayfields, grapes, birch- 
borders— always lurkingly fond of threnodies — begin- 
ning and ending his long career with chants of death, 
with here and there through all, poems, or passages of 
poems, touching the highest universal truths, enthu- 
siasms, duties — morals as grim and eternal, if not as 
stormy and fateful,' as anything in Eschylus. While 
in Whittier, with his special themes — (his outcropping 
love of heroism and war, for all his Quakerdom, his 
verses at times like the measur'd step of Cromwell's 
old veterans) — in Whittier lives the zeal, the moral 
energy, that founded New England — the splendid rec- 
titude and ardor of Luther, Milton, George Fox — I 
must not, dare not, say the wilfulness and narrowness 
— though doul)tlcss the world needs now, and always 
will need, almost above all, just such narrowness and 
wilfulness. 

Sinu/iiy, April //. — An hour and a half, late this af- 
ternoon, in silence and half light, in the great nave of 
Memorial hall, Cambridge, the walls thickly cover'd 
with mural tablets, bearing the names of students and 
graduates of the university who fell in the secession war. 

April 2j. — It was well I got away in fair order, for if 
I had staid another week I should have been killed 
with kindness, and with eating and drinking. 



1 86 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

BIRDS— AND A CAUTION 

May 14. — Home again; down temporarily in the 
Jersey woods. Between 8 and 9 A. M. a full concert of 
birds, from different quarters, in keeping with the 
fresh scent, the peace, the naturalness all around me. 
I am lately noticing the russet-back, size of the robin 
or a trifle less, light breast and shoulders, with irregu- 
lar dark stripes — tail long — sits hunch'd up by the 
hour these days, top of a tall bush, or some tree, sing- 
ing blithely. I often get near and listen, as he seems 
tame; I like to watch the working of his bill and 
throat, the quaint sidle of his body, and flex of his 
long tail. I hear the woodpecker, and night and early 
morning the shuttle of the whip-poor-will —noons, the 
gurgle of thrush delicious, and 7iieo-o-ow of the cat- 
bird. Many I cannot name; but I do not very partic- 
ularly seek information. (You must not know too 
much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and 
trees and flowers and water-craft; a certain free margin, 
and even vagueness— perhaps ignorance, credulity — 
helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the sen- 
timent of feather'd, wooded, river, or marine Nature 
generally. I repeat it — don't want to know too exact- 
ly, or the reasons why. My own notes have been 
written off-hand in the latitude of middle New Jersey. 
Though they describe what I saw — what appear'd to 
me — I dare say the expert ornithologist, botanist, or 
entomologist will detect more than one slip in them.) 

MY NATIVE SAND AND SALT ONCE MORE 
Jicly 2j, '81. — Far Rockaway, L. /. — A good day 
here, on a jaunt, amid the sand and salt, a steady 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 187 

breeze setting in trom the sea, the sun shining, the 
sedge-odor, the noise of the surf, a mixture of hissing 
and booming, the milk-white crests curHng over. 1 
had a leisurely bath and naked ramble as of old, on 
the warm-gray shore-sands, my companions off in a 
boat in deeper water — (I shouting to them Jupiter's 
menaces against the gods, from Pope's Homer.) 

July 28 — to Long Braiich. — 8X A. M., on the steamer 
** Plymouth Rock," foot of 23d street, New York, for 
Long Branch. Another fine day, fine sights, the 
shores, the shipping and bay — everything comforting 
to the body and spirit of me. (1 find the human and 
objective atmosphere of New York city and Brooklyn 
more affiliative to me than any other.) An hour later 
— Still on the steamer, now sniffing the salt very plain- 
ly — the long pulsating swash as our boat steams sea- 
ward — the hills of Navesink and many passing vessels 
— the air the best part of all. At Long Branch the 
bulk of the day, stopt at a good hotel, took all very 
leisurely, had an excellent dinner, and then drove for 
over two hours about the place, especially Ocean ave- 
nue, the finest drive one can imagine, seven or eight 
miles right along the beach. In all directions costly 
villas, palaces, millionaires — (but few among them I 
opine like my friend George W. Childs, whose per- 
sonal integrity, generosity, unafTected simplicity, go 
beyond all worldly wealth.) 

HOT WEATHER NEW YORK 

August. — In the big city awhile. Even the height of 
the dog-days, there is a good deal of fun about New 
York, if you only avoid fluster, and take all the buoy- 



l88 AUTOBTOGRAPHIA 

ant wholesomeness that offers. More comfort, too, 
than most folks think. A middle-aged man, with 
plenty of money in his pocket, tells me that he has 
been off for a month to all the swell places, has dis- 
burs'd a small fortune, has been hot and out of kilter 
everywhere, and has return'd home and lived in New 
York city the last two weeks quite contented and hap- 
py. People forget when it is hot here, it is generally 
hotter still in other places. New York is so situated, 
with the great ozonic brine on both sides, it comprises 
the most favorable health-chances in the world. (If 
only the suffocating crowding of some of its tenement 
houses could be broken up.) I find 1 never sufficiently 
realized how beautiful are the upper two-thirds of 
Manhattan island. I am stopping at Mott Haven, and 
have been familiar now for ten days with the region 
above One-Hundredth street, and along the Harlem 
river and Washington heights. Am dwelling a few 
days with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. J., and a 
merry housefull of young ladies. Am putting the 
last touches on the printer's copy of my new volume of 
''Leaves of Grass" — the completed book at last. 
Work at it two or three hours, and then go down and 
loaf along the Harlem river; have just had a good spell 
of this recreation. The sun sufficiently veil'd, a soft 
south breeze, the river full of small or large shells 
(light taper boats) darting up and down, some singly, 
now and then long ones with six or eight young fel- 
lows practicing — very inspiriting sights. Two fine 
yachts lie anchored off the shore. I linger long, enjoy- 
ing the sundown, the glow, the streak'd sky, the 
heights, distances, shadows. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 1 89 

Aug. 10. — As I haltingly ramble an hour or two this 
forenoon by the more secluded parts of the shore, or 
sit under an old cedar half way up the hill, the city 
near in view, many young parties gather to bathe or 
swim, squads of boys, generally twos or threes, some 
larger ones, along the sand-bottom, or off an old pier 
close by. A peculiar and pretty carnival — at its height 
a hundred lads or young men, very democratic, but 
all decent behaving. The laughter, voices, calls, re- 
sponses — the springing and diving of the bathers from 
the great string-piece of the decay 'd pier, where climb 
or stand long ranks of them, naked, rose-color'd, with 
movements, postures ahead of any sculpture. To all 
this, the sun, so bright, the dark-green shadow of the 
hills the other side, the amber-rolling waves, changing 
as the tide comes in to a transparent tea-color — the fre- 
quent splash of the playful boys, sousing — the glittering 
drops sparkling, and the good western breeze blowing. 

SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES— MEMORIES 

Atig. 16. — "Chalk a big mark for to-day," was one 
of the sayings of an old sportsman-friend of mine, 
when he had had unusually good luck — come home 
thoroughly tired, but with satisfactory results of fish or 
birds. Well, to-day might warrant such a mark for 
me. Everything propitious from the start. An hour's 
fresh stimulation, coming down ten miles of Manhattan 
island by railroad and 8 o'clock stage. Then an excel- 
lent breakfast at Pfaff's restaurant, 24th street. Our 
host himself, an old friend of mine, ([uickly appcar'd 
on the scene to welcome me and bring up the news, 
and, first opening a big fat bottle of the best wine in 



igO AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

the cellar, talk about ante-bellum times, '59 and '60, 
and the jovial suppers at his then Broadway place, near 
Bleecker street. Ah, the friends and names and fre- 
quenters, those times, that place. Most are dead — 
Ada Clare, Wilkins, Daisy Sheppard, O'Brien, Henry 
Clapp, Stanley, Mullin, Wood, Brougham, Arnold — 
all gone. And there Pfaff and I, sitting opposite each 
other at the little table, gave a remembrance to them 
in a style they would have themselves fully confirm'd, 
namely, big, brimming, fill'd-up champagne-glasses, 
drain'd in abstracted silence, very leisurely, to the last 
drop. (Pfaff is a generous German restaurateur, silent, 
stout, jolly, and I should say the best selecter of cham- 
pagne in America.) 

A DISCOVERY OF OLD AGE 

Perhaps the best is always cumulative. One's eating 
and drinking one wants fresh, and for the nonce, 
right off, and have done with it — but I would not give 
a straw for that person or poem, or friend, or city, or 
work of art, that was not more grateful the second 
time than the first — and more still the third. Nay, I 
do not believe any grandest eligibility ever comes forth 
at first. In my own experience, (persons, poems, 
places, characters,) I discover the best hardly ever at 
first, (no absolute rule about it, however,) sometimes 
suddenly bursting forth, or stealthily opening to me, 
perhaps after years of unwitting familiarity, unapprecia- 
tion, usage. 

A VISIT, AT THE LAST, TO R. W. EMERSON 
Concord, Mass, — Out here on a visit — elastic, mellow, 
Indian-summery weather. Came to-day from Boston, 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I9I 

(a pleasant ride of 40 minutes by steam, through Somer- 
ville, Belmont, Waltham, Stony Brook, and other 
lively towns,) convoy'd by my friend F. B. Sanborn, 
and to his ample house, and the kindness and hospital- 
ity of Mrs. S. and their fine family. Am writing this 
under the shade of some old hickories and elms, just 
after 4 p. M., on the porch, within a stone's throw of 
the Concord river. Off against me, across stream, on 
a meadow and side-hill, haymakers are gathering and 
wagoning-in probably their second or third crop. The 
spread of emerald-green and brown, the knolls, the 
score or two of little haycocks dotting the meadow, 
the loaded-up wagons, the patient horses, the slow- 
strong action of the men and pitchforks — all in the 
just-waning afternoon, with patches of yellow sun- 
sheen, mottled by long shadows — a cricket shrilly chirp- 
ing, herald of the dusk — a boat with two figures noise- 
lessly gliding along the little river, passing under the 
stone bridge-arch — the slight settling haze of aerial 
moisture, the sky and the peacefulness expanding in 
all directions and overhead — fill and soothe me. 

Sanie cvenijig. — Never had I a better piece of luck 
befall me: a long and blessed evening with Emerson, 
in a way I couldn't have wished better or difi'erent. 
For nearly two hours he has been placidly sitting where 
I could see his face in the best light, near me. Mrs. 
S.'s back-parl(jr well fill'd with people, neighbors, many 
fresh and charming faces, women, mostly young, but 
some old. My friend A. B. Alcott wwiX liis daughter 
Louisa were there early. A good deal of talk, tlic sub- 
ject Henry Thr)r(^au — som(! new glints of his life and 
fortunes, with letters to and fn^n him — (jne of the best 



192 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

by Margaret Fuller, others by Horace Greeley, Chan- 
ning, &c. — one from Thoreau himself, most quaint and 
interesting. (No doubt I seem'd very stupid to the 
room-full of company, taking hardly any part in the 
conversation; but I had **my own pail to milk in," as 
the Swiss proverb puts it.) My seat and the relative 
arrangement were such that, without being rude, or 
anything of the kind, I could just look squarely at E., 
which I did a good part of the two hours. On enter- 
ing, he had spoken very briefly and politely to several 
of the company, then settled himself in his chair, a 
trifle push'd back, and, though a listener and appar- 
ently an alert one, remain'd silent through the whole 
talk and discussion. A lady friend quietly took a seat 
next him, to give special attention. A good color in 
his face, eyes clear, with the well-known expression of 
sweetness, and the old clear-peering aspect quite the 
same. 

Next Day,. — Several hours at E.'s house, and dinner 
there. An old familiar house, (he has been in it thirty- 
five years,) with surroundings, furnishment, roominess, 
and plain elegance and fullness, signifying democratic 
ease, sufficient opulence, and an admirable old-fash- 
ioned simplicity — modern luxury, with its mere sumptu- 
ousness and affectation, either touch'd lightly upon or 
ignored altogether. Dinner the same. Of course the 
best of the occasion (Sunday, September 18, '81) was 
the sight of E. himself. As just said, a healthy color 
in the cheeks, and good light in the eyes, cheery ex- 
pression, and just the amount of talking that best 
suited, namely, a word or short phrase only where 
needed, and almost always with a smile. Besides 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I93 

Emerson himself, Mrs. E., with their daughter Ellen, 
the son Edward and his wife, with my friend F. S. and 
Mrs. S., and others, relatives and intimates. Mrs. 
Emerson, resuming the subject of the evening before, 
(I sat next to her,) gave me further and fuller informa- 
tion about Thoreau, who, years ago, during Mr. E.'s 
absence in Europe, had lived for sometime in the fam- 
ily, by invitation. 

OTHER CONCORD NOTATIONS 

Though the evening at Mr. and Mrs. Sanborn's, and 
the memorable family dinner at Mr. and Mrs. Emer- 
son's, have most pleasantly and permanently fill'd my 
memory, I must not slight other notations of Concord. 
I went to the old Manse, walk'd through the ancient 
garden, enter'd the rooms, noted the quaintness, the 
unkempt grass and bushes, the little panes in the win- 
dows, the low ceilings, the spicy smell, the creepers 
embowering the light. Went to the Concord battle 
ground, which is close by, scann'd French's statue, 
•'the Minute Man," read Emerson's poetic inscription 
on the base, linger'd a long while on the bridge, and 
stopp'd by the grave of the unnamed British soldiers 
buried there the day after the fight in April '75. Then 
riding on, (thanks to my friend Miss M. and her spirited 
white ponies, she driving them,) a half hour at Haw- 
thorne's and Thoreau's graves. I got out and went up 
of course on foot, and stood a long while and pondcr'd. 
They lie close together in a pleasant wooded spot well 
up the cemetery hill, " Sleepy Hollow." The Hat sur- 
face of the first was densely cover'd by myrtle, with a 
l:)order of arbor-vitae, and the other had a brown head- 



194 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

stone, moderately elaborate, with inscriptions. By 
Henry's side lies his brother John, of whom much was 
expected, but he died young. Then to Walden pond, 
that beautiful embower'd sheet of water, and spent 
over an hour there. On the spot in the woods where 
Thoreau had his solitary house is now quite a cairn of 
stones, to mark the place; I too carried one and de- 
posited on the heap. As we drove back, saw the 
"School of Philosophy," but it was shut up, and I 
would not have it open'd for me. Near by stopp'd at 
the house of W. T. Harris, the Hegelian, who came 
out, and we had a pleasant chat while I sat in the 
wagon. I shall not soon forget those Concord drives, 
and especially that charming Sunday forenoon one 
with my friend Miss M., and the white ponies. 

BOSTON COMMON— MORE OF EMERSON 

Oct, 10-13. — I spend a good deal of time on the 
Common, these delicious days and nights — every mid- 
day from 11.30 to about i — and almost every sunset 
another hour. I know all the big trees, especially the 
old elms along Tremont and Beacon streets, and have 
come to a sociable-silent understanding with most of 
them, in the sunlit air, (yet crispy-cool enough,) as I 
saunter along the wide unpaved walks. Up and down 
this breadth by Beacon street, between these same old 
elms, I walk'd for two hours, of a bright sharp Febru- 
ary mid-day twenty-one years ago, with Emerson, then 
in his prime, keen, physically and morally magnetic, 
arm'd at every point, and when he chose, wielding the 
emotional just as well as the intellectual. During those 
two hours he was the talker and I the listener. It was 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I95 

an argument-statement, reconnoitring, review, attack, 
and pressing home, (like an army corps in order, artil- 
lery, cavalry, infantry,) of all that could be said against 
that part (and a main part) in the construction of my 
poems, "Children of Adam." More precious than gold 
to me that dissertation — it afforded me, ever after, this 
strange and paradoxical lesson ; each point of E.'s 
statement was unanswerable, no judge's charge ever 
more complete or convincing, I could never hear the 
points better put — and then I felt down in my soul the 
clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, and 
pursue my own way. " What have you to say then to 
such things?" said E., pausing in conclusion. ''Only 
that while I can't answer them at all, I feel more set- 
tled than ever to adhere to my own theory, and exem- 
plify it," was my candid response. Whereupon we went 
and had a good dinner at the American House. And 
thenceforward I never waver'd or was touch'd with 
qualms, (as I confess I had been two or three times be- 
fore.) 

AN OSSIANIC NIGHT— DEAREST FRIENDS 

jYov., *Si. — Again back in Camden. As I cross the 
Delaware in long trips to-night, between 9 and 1 1, the 
scene overhead is a peculiar one — swift sheets of flitting 
vapor-gauze, follow'd by dense clouds throwing an inky 
pall on everything. Then a spell of that transparent steel- 
gray black sky I have noticed und(*r similar cir( iim- 
stances, on which the moon would i)cam for a few 
moments with c^alm lustre, throwing down a broad 
dazzle of highway on the waters ; then the misls caiccr- 
ing again. All silently, yet driven as if by the furies 



196 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

they sweep along, sometimes quite thin, sometimes 
thicker — a real Ossianic night — amid the whirl, absent 
or dead friends, the old, the past, somehow tenderly 
suggested — while the Gael-strains chant themselves 
from the mists — [" Be thy soul blest, O Carril ! in the 
midst of thy eddying winds. O that thou wouldst 
come to my hall when I am alone by night ! And thou 
dost come, my friend. I hear often thy light hand on 
my harp, when it hangs on the distant wall, and the 
feeble sound touches my ear. Why dost thou not 
speak to me in my grief, and tell me when I shall be-* 
hold my friends ? But thou passest away in thy mur- 
muring blast ; the wind whistles through the gray hairs 
of Ossian."] 

How or why I know not, just at the moment, but I 
too muse and think of my best friends in their distant 
homes — of William O'Connor, of Maurice Bucke, of 
John Burroughs, and of Mrs. Gilchrist — friends of my 
soul — stanchest friends of my other soul, my poems. 

AT PRESENT WRITING— PERSONAL 

A letter to a Ge7^nian friend — extract 
May ji. '82. — ** From to-day I enter upon my 64th 
year. The paralysis that first affected me nearly ten 
years ago, has since remain'd, with varying course — 
seems to have settled quietly down, and will probably 
continue. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk 
far; but my spirits are first-rate. I go around in pub- 
lic almost every day — now and then take long trips, by 
railroad or boat, hundreds of miles — live largely in the 
open air — am sunburnt and stout, (weigh 190)— keep 
up my activity and interest in life, people, progress, 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I97 

and the questions of the day. About two-thirds of the 
time I am quite comfortable. What mentality I ev^er 
had remains entirely unaffected; though physically I 
am a half paralytic, and likely to be so, long as I live. 
But the principal object of my life seems to have been 
accomplish'd — I have the most devoted and ardent of 
friends, and affectionate relatives — and of enemies I 
really make no account." 

FINAL CONFESSIONS— LITERARY TESTS 

So draw near their end these garrulous notes. There 
have doubtless occurr'd some repetitions, technical 
errors in the consecutiveness of dates, in the minutiae 
of botanical, astronomical, &c., exactness, and perhaps 
elsewhere; — for in gathering up, writing, peremptorily 
dispatching copy, this hot weather, (last of July and 
through August, '82,) and delaying not the printers, I 
have had to hurry along, no time to spare. But in the 
deepest veracity of all men — in reflections of objects, 
scenes. Nature's outpourings, to my senses and recep- 
tivity, as they seem'd to me — in the work of giving 
those who care for it, some authentic glints, specimen- 
days of my life — and in the bona fide spirit and relations, 
from author to reader, on all the subjects design'd, 
and as far as they go, I feel to make unmitigated 
claims. 

The synr)psis of my early life, Long Island, New York 
city, and so forth, and the diary-jottings in the Seces- 
sion war, tell their own story. I\Iy plan in starting 
what constitutes most of the middle of the book, was 
originally for hints and data (A a Nalure-pocni that 
should carry one's experiences a few hours, conimenc- 



198 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

ingat noon-flush, and so through the after-part of the 
day — I suppose led to such idea by own life's afternoon 
having arrived. But I soon found I could move at 
more ease by giving the narrative at first hand. (Then 
there is a humiliating lesson one learns, in serene hours, 
of a fine day or night. Nature seems to look on all 
fixed-up poetry and art as something almost imperti- 
nent.) 

Thus I went on, years following, various seasons and 
areas, spinning forth my thought beneath the night and 
stars, (or as I was confined to my room by half-sick- 
ness,) or at midday looking out upon the sea, or far 
north steaming over the Saguenay's black breast, jot- 
ting all down in the loosest sort of chronological order, 
and here printing from my impromptu notes, hardly 
even the seasons group'd together, or anything correct- 
ed — so afraid of dropping what smack of outdoors or 
sun or starlight might cling to the lines, I dared not 
try to meddle with or smooth them. Every now and 
then, (not often, but for a foil,) I carried a book in my 
pocket — or perhaps tore out from some broken or cheap 
edition a bunch of loose leaves; most always had some- 
thing of the sort ready, but only took it out when the 
mood demanded. In that way, utterly out of reach of 
literary conventions, I re-read many authors. 

I cannot divest my appetite of literature, yet I find 
myself eventually tiying it all by Nature — -first premises 
many call it, but really the crowning results of all, 
laws, tallies and proofs. (Has it never occurr'd to any 
one how the last deciding tests applicable to a book 
are entirely outside of technical and grammatical ones, 
and that any truly first-class production has little or 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA I99 

nothing to do with the rules and calibres of ordinary 
critics ? or the bloodless chalk of Allibone's Dictionary ? 
I have fancied the ocean and the daylight, the mount- 
ain and the forest, putting their spirit in a judgment on 
our books. I have fancied some disembodied human 
soul giving its verdict.) 

NATURE AND DEMOCRACY— MORALITY 

Democracy most of all affiliates with the open air, is 
sunny and hardy and sane only with Nature — just as 
much as Art is. Something is required to temper both 
— to check them, restrain them from excess, morbidity. 
I have wanted, before departure, to bear special testi- 
mony to a very old lesson and requisite. American 
Democracy, in its myriad personalities, in factories, 
work-shops, stores, offices — through the dense streets 
and houses of cities, and all their manifold sophis- 
ticated life — must either be fibred, vitalized, by regu- 
ular contact with out-door light and air and growths, 
farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth 
and free skies, or it will morbidly dwindle and pale. 
We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work peo- 
ple, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of 
America,) on any less terms. I conceive of no flourish- 
ing and heroic elements of Democracy in the Ihiited 
States, or of Democracy maintaining itself at all, with- 
out the Nature-element forming a main part — to he its 
health-element and beauty-element — to really underlie 
the whole politics, sanity, religior. and art of the New 
World. 

Finally, the morality. " Virtue." said Marcus Aure- 
lius, " what is it, only a living and enthusiastic syni- 



200 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

pathy with Nature ? " Perhaps indeed the efforts of 
the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, 
have been, and ever will be, our time and times to 
come, essentially the same — to bring people back from 
V their persistent strayings and sickly abstractions, to the 
costless average, divine, original concrete. 

ADDITIONAL NOTE, 1887, TO ENGLISH EDITION 
*' SPECIMEN DAYS " 

As I write these lines I still continue living in Cam- 
den, New Jersey, America. Coming this way from 
Washington city, on my road to the sea-shore (and a 
temporary rest, as I supposed) in the early summer of 
1873, I broke down disabled, and have dwelt here, as 
my central residence, all the time since — almost 14 
years. In the preceding pages I have described how, 
during those years, I partially recuperated (in 1876) 
from my worst paralysis by going down to Timber 
Creek, living close to Nature, and domiciling with my 
dear friends, George and Susan Stafford. From 1877 
or '8 to '83 or '4 I was well enough to travel around, 
considerably — journey'd westward to Kansas, leisurely 
exploring the Prairies, and on to Denver and the 
Rocky Mountains; another time north to Canada, 
where I spent most of. the summer with my friend Dr. 
Bucke, and jaunted along the great lakes, and the St. 
Lawrence and Saguenay rivers; another time to Boston, 
to properly print the final edition of my poems (I was 
there over two months, and had a ** good time.") I 
have so brought out the completed " Leaves of Grass " 
during this period; also "Specimen Days," of which 
the foregoing is a transcript; collected and re-edited 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 20I 

the "Democratic Vistas" cluster — commemorated 
Abraham Lincoln's death, on the successive anniversa- 
ries of Its occurrence, by delivering my lecture on it ten 
or twelve times; and " put in," through many a month 
and season, the aimless and resultless ways of most 
human lives. 

Thus the last 14 years have pass'd. At present (end- 
days of March, 1887— I am nigh entering my 69th 
year) I find myself continuing on here, quite dilapi- 
dated and even wreck'd bodily from the paralysis, &c. 
—but in good heart (to use a Long Island country 
phrase,) and with about the same mentality as ever. 
The worst of it is, I have been growing feebler quite 
rapidly for a year, and now can't walk around— hardly 
from one room to the next. I am forced to stay in- 
doors and in my big chair nearly all the time. We have 
had a sharp, dreary winter too, and it has pinch'd me. 
I am alone most of the time: every week, indeed almost 
everyday, write some — reminiscences, essays, sketches, 
for the magazines; and read, or rather I should say 
dawdle over books and papers a good deal— spend half 
the day at that. 

Nor can I finisli this note without putting on record 
—wafting over sea from hence— my deepest thanks to 
certain friends and helpers in the P^ritish islands, as 
well as in America. Dear, even in the abstract, is such 
nattering unction always no doubt to the soul ! Nigher 
still, if pcjssible, I myself have been, and am to-day in- 
debted to such helj) for my very sustenance, rlothino-, 
shelter, and continuity. And 1 would not !;(» to the 
grave without briefly, but jjlamly, as 1 here rlo. ac- 
knowledging— may : not say even glorying in il ^^ 



202 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 



TO BE PRESENT ONLY 



At the Co7npli7ne7itary Dinner, Cajnden, New Jersey , 
May ji, zc?c?p.— Walt Whitman said: 

My friends, though announced to give an address, 
there is no such intention. Following the impulse ot 
the spirit, (for I am at least half of Quaker stock) I have 
obey'd the command to come and look at you, for a 
miinute, and show myself, face to face; which is proba- 
bly the best I can do. But I have felt no command to 
make a speech; and shall not therefore attempt any. 
All I have felt the imperative conviction to say I have 
already printed In my books of poems or prose; to 
which I refer any who may be curious. And so, hail 
and farewell. Deeply acknowledging this deep com- 
pliment, with my best respects and love to you per- 
sonally — to Camden — to New-Jersey, and to all rep- 
resented here — ^you must excuse me from any word 
further. 

SOME PERSONAL AND OLD AGE JOTTINGS 

(1891) 

About myself at present. I will soon enter upon my 
73d year, if I live — have pass'd an active life, as coun- 
try school-teacher, gardener, printer, carpenter, au- 
thor and journalist, domicil'd in nearly all the United 
States and principal cities. North and South — went to 
the front (moving about and occupied as army nurse 
and missionary) during the Secession war, 1861 to '65, 
and in the Virginia hospitals and after the battles of 
that time, tending the Northern and Southern wound- 
ed alike — work'd down South and in Washington city 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 203 

arduously three years — contracted the paralysis which 
I have suffer'd ever since — and now live in a little cot- 
tage of my own, near the Delaware in New Jersey. My 
chief book, unrhym'd and unmetrical (it has taken 
thirty years, peace and war, "a horning") has its aim 
as once said, "to utter the same old human critter — 
but now in Democratic American modern and scien- 
tific conditions." Then I have publish'd two prose 
works ''Specimen Days," and a late one " November 
Boughs." (A little volume "Good-bye my Fancy " is 
soon to be out, wh' will finish the matter.) I do not 
propose here to enter the much-fought field of the 
literary criticism of any of those works. 

But for a few portraiture or descriptive bits. To-day 
in the upper of a little w^ooden house of two stories 
near the Delaware river, east shore, sixty miles up from 
the sea, is a rather large 2o-by-2o low ceiling'd room 
something like a big old ship's cabin. The fioor, three 
quarters of it with an ingrain carpet, is half cover'd by 
a deep litter of books, papers, magazines, thrown-down 
letters and circulars, rejected manuscripts, memoranda, 
bits of light or strong twine, a bui.dle to be " ex- 
prcss'd," and two or three venerable scrap books. In 
the room stanrl two large tables (one of ancient St. 
Domingo mahogany with immense leax'cs) cover'd by 
a jumble of more papers, a \arie(l and copious array of 
writing materials, sexeral glass and (Miina \essels or 
jars, some with cologne-water, others with real hone\-. 
granulated sugar, a large bnneli of beantifiil fresh yel- 
low chrysanthemums, some letters and eiuc-lopt p<L- 
pers ready for tlu! ])ost oHh-c. many photographs, and 
a hundred indescribable things besides. There are all 



204 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 

around many books, some quite handsome editions, 
some half cover'd by dust, some within reach, evi- 
dently used, (good-sized print, no type less than long 
primer,) some maps, the Bible, (the strong cheap edi- 
tion of the English crown,) Homer, Shakspere, Walter 
Scott, Emerson, Ticknor's ** Spanish Literature," John 
Carlyle's ** Dante," Felton's *' Greece," George Sand's 
"Consuelo," a very choice little " Epictetus,"some nov- 
els, the latest foreign and American monthlies, quarter- 
lies, and so on. There being quite a strew of printer's 
proofs and slips, and the daily papers, the place with 
its quaint old fashion'd calmness has also a smack of 
something alert and of current work. There are sev- 
eral trunks and depositaries back'd up at the walls; 
(one well-bound and big box came by express lately 
from Washington city, after storage there for nearly 
twenty years.) Indeed the whole room is a sort of re- 
sult and storage collection of my own past life. I have 
here various editions of my own writings, and sell 
them upon request; one is a big volume of complete 
poemis and prose, i,ooo pages, autograph, essays, 
speeches, portraits from life, &c. Another is a little 
Leaves of Grass, latest date, six portraits, morocco 
bound, in pocket-book form. 

Fortunately the apartment is quite roomy. There 
are three windows in front. At one side is the stove, 
with a cheerful fire of oak wood, near by a good supply 
of fresh sticks, whose faint aroma is plain. On an- 
other side is the bed with white coverlid and woollen 
blankets. Toward the windows is a huge arm-chair, 
(a Christmas present from Thomas Donaldson's young 
daughter and son, Philadelphia) timber'd as by some 



AUTOBIOGRAPHIA 205 

stout ship's spars, yellow polish'd, ample, with rattan- 
woven seat and back, and over the latter a great wide 
wolf-skin of hairy black and silver, spread to guard 
against cold and draught. A time-w^orn look and 
scent of old oak attach both to the chair and the per- 
son occupying it.* 

* Mr. Whitman experienced a severe malarial attack early in his hospital 
work, and from time to time thereafter suffered from its results, until, in Jan- 
uary of 1873, he was stricken with paralysis. He had partly recovered from 
this when the sudden death of his mother in the following May completely pros- 
trated him. He gave up his position at Washmgton, and removed to the 
home of hi;, brother. Col. George W. Whitman, at Camden, N. J. The lat- 
ter built a new house late in 1873 at No. 431 Stevens Street, and the poet 
remained there, boarding with his brother's family, until 1883. In that 
year he purchased the house at No. 328 Mickle Street, described in the con- 
cluding paragraphs. A series of articles in the Springfield (Mass.) Repub- 
lican for 1875 called attention to his feeble condition and moderate 
circumstances, and friends in America and England rallied to his support. 
Their efforts were continued at intervals through the remainder of his life. 
Mr. Whitman has himself related how much he was benefited by his out-of- 
door life in the New Jersey woods, but he never fully recovered hisstrength. 
'1 his began to fail seriously in 1885, and a horse and carriage were procured 
to enable him to enjoy the open air. They were succeeded three years la- 
ter by a wheeled chair; and an attendant, Warren Fritzinger, accompanied 
him abroad. Mr. Fritzinger and Mrs. Mary Davis, the housekeeper, were 
familiar figures to the circle of Philadelphia friends who visited the cottage 
in Mickle Street. For some months before his death, Mr. Whitman w.as 
unable to leave his bed. He died at his house in Camden, N. J., March 26, 
1892.— A. S. 



THE END. 



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